Prometheus
by TheUnsigned
Summary: The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Prometheus

**Status: **In Progress

**Fandom:**Portal (2)

**Rating:**R or T on

**Genre:**General

**Warnings:** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

**Pairings: **There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

**Summary: **The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

**Disclaimer: **The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

"_All that the proud can feel of pain,  
>The agony they do not show,<br>The suffocating sense of woe,  
>Which speaks but in its loneliness,<br>And then is jealous lest the sky  
>Should have a listener, nor will sigh<br>Until its voice is echoless."_

_- _Excerpt from_ Prometheus _by Lord Byron

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 1<em>

As though in a dream, Chell's body responded to an ingrained, somewhat Pavlovian response to leap to her feet the moment she heard the voice of GLaDOS pervade her senses. The smooth alto, weaving its spell in the air in flat robotics and coloured a glorious purple with lies of human notes had been her call to defensive arms for as long as she could remember. The room swam as she tried to bring herself to stand upright or even to so much as focus but her head felt stuffed, her forehead hot and prickling as though she was being stuck with tiny pins..

"Killing…ou…i…hard."

Although the command to move percolated in her brain, the corresponding nerve endings staunchly took an eternity to obey. Each muscle in her body pounded with its own pulse and the warbling birdsong of the oblong and blue-eyed (her heart gave a flutter of startled recognition, but no, it was not her old companion after all), over-large core body of the strange new robots only served to intensify the discomfort.

It was not pain, not in the strictest sense. Chell was no stranger to pain. Her skin was a map of scars and shiny patches of heat-seared flesh that were memories of close calls with the many deadly traps that Aperture had to offer. This was a new sensation and decidedly more unpleasant. She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate.

"…friend…Caroline…deleted…"

Was it her, or did GLaDOS' voice just flatten? Become less human?

She had no more time to assess the situation as the two strange robots took hold of her, a situation that Chell used to aid herself in the task of standing upright. Their grip was gentle but each movement was tinged with some sort of artificially manufactured condemnation as they directed her toward the lift. With one hand on either side of her lower back, they sent her firmly forward into a graceless stumble, manipulating the buttons that sealed her within her glass coffin and without further fanfare sent the elevator upward at what felt like a glacial pace, despite the rapid thrum of mechanics beneath her feet.

She was expecting more testing of course, unwilling to trust anything that GLaDOS told her. Particularly, now that the only lingering spark of humanity within the A.I. had been arguably obliterated. She tried to focus on preparation by pushing past the increasingly uncomfortable sensations in her body. She reminded herself that she'd had worse, had come close to freedom not once but twice before and would come up with a plan so that her goal would not evade her grasp yet again.

What happened next was a far more inspiring jolt into the realms of functional reality than any mental pep talk. The tube-like walls outside the elevator suddenly fell away around her, leaving only the single lair of breakable, flimsy, useless glass between herself and a veritable army of turrets.

Her eyes made a trained sweep of the area, scanning for a portal-friendly surface. It was a gesture simultaneously frantic and controlled, one only achieved by only the desperate or well practiced. Chell was the cultivated combination of both. When this proved futile, and really, there was no other feeling save for a sense of resignation, the woman dropped her hands to her sides and looked directly at the bouquet of red scope lasers, all of which were pointed directly at her. Her eyes were wide, almost to the point of protruding from her face; determined to face her end head on and with pride intact.

Proving to no great effect that everyone is somewhat religious in times of strife, this shadow of a human being who knew nothing of even the potential of a deity beyond what Aperture had shown her of the futility of hope soundlessly moved her lips in a sort of infant prayer; the last resort of the resigned.

One turret spontaneously twitched, its panel flaring out like the wing of a poisonous Amazonian butterfly at rest, daring to invite any predator to brave the taste of its venomous body. Chell's eyes began to itch with the need for moisture but she would not allow GLaDOS a victory. Any victory. Even she who had been raised in the florescent bath of artificial facility light knew the folly of giving your enemy the satisfaction of seeing you break.

As the lone human prepared herself to face the unknown of what happened after kicking off from this mortal coil, a single note broke the silence. It was sweet and musical but for the reaction it garnered, it may as well have been as a gunshot. Every muscle in her body visibly tensed, but to her credit Chell held her position and did not move save for a violent, pulsing vein under her left eye. Sweat dripped into her vision as she waited for the deployment of ammunition that seemed to be taking an eternity to arrive.

It did not arrive at all.

The turret's panel closed, its right side twin opening in another flare with another soft, sweet and wholly melodic note. A brief silence hung in the air as suddenly the lift gave an immense shudder propelling its occupant into what Chell, had she the vocabulary to name such a structure, would have called an amphitheatre.

The music drifted between the turrets as they for all the woman in the lift understood, babbled in melodic gibberish. Her gaze darted between each separate piece of warbling ordinance in turn. She may not have understood the Italian but she could detect the tonal undercurrents of the voice between them as though GLaDOS herself was singing this song, projecting her will and voice through the facility in the unexpected vessel of pitch, rhythm and tone. Perhaps this was the jilted AI's reminder to the only audience she had. One last reminder that the facility, as well as Chell herself was and always had been merely a part of her whims and machinations and will, potatoes notwithstanding.

Miraculously, the speeding elevator left the turrets below as the last strains of music faded into the ether. The glass separating the lift's occupant from the world peeled itself back to present her with a door. It was nothing like the usual Aperture doors in its rotten wooden decay. An unusual light source danced in moats through the cracks, bringing with it a scent unlike anything Chell had experienced before. Sweet, earthy and something else she couldn't place. It felt strange and unnatural; at least, that was to say that it smelled nothing like the facility.

The small dank space and the now quiet servo motors in the glass prison left Chell with was no other options besides straight and forward. She gave the strange-looking door a tentative push and it gave way with a snap and crack of brittle wood. She winced, expecting a reprimand but even though it never came she barely registered the lack of response. It was the scene on the other side that she was not at all prepared for but now encompassed her full attention. Gold beneath her feet and an expansive ceiling painted in a palette of blue and white that simply did not exist within the facility.

Curiosity caused her to venture forward a few steps further beyond the threshold. The door swung slowly shut behind her but she paid it no mind as she marched, her progress halting just short of the golden ocean which rippled outward in hypnotic waves. She looked around for the cooling fan – the usual cause of air disturbances within the facility, but finding none her hopes began to rise.

_It couldn't be…could it?_

The woman nervously extended one finger towards the stalks of vegetation, ghosting the pad of her finger against the chaff. When it didn't disappear, her lips opened wide in a soundless whoop of joy and she ran her hands through the stuff, sending little seed pods fluttering off into the breeze where they drifted on the currents a short way, disappearing to rest between the dense wheat and sandy earth.

As she reveled in her miraculously granted freedom, sheer happiness overruling the fatigue and aches of her body, drinking in this amazing first look at a world not dominated by the artificial, the door to the shed swung free of its own volition. Without any fanfare, the tiny structure expectorated the companion cube, charred and cracked. It tumbled out to rock to a stop at her feet.

Chell gazed at it a moment in shock before she panicked, wringing her hands and pacing on her island of hard-packed clay. That was what it felt like now: a desert island. The initial elation had given way to a grim understanding that she had been ejected forcibly from the only home she'd ever had. GLaDOS' final torment was this message; no more or less clear than if she'd said it aloud.

_I used to want you dead, but I'll settle for simply having you gone. Be gone, don't come back, I don't want you. _

_You. _

_Are._

_Not. _

_Welcome. _

_Here._

In a sudden desperate frenzy, Chell turned and ripped open the door to the shed, ignoring a large piece of wood that splintered off and desperately ready to dive back into the familiar embrace of darkness and an existence with a purpose. Nothing but a powerful metallic tang of electricity and the uncomfortable crackle and warmth of a working power hub pervaded her senses. The lift was gone, a dusty wooden and solid floor having taken its place. Numbly, Chell picked and pried at the boards but they seemed nailed down or perhaps too heavy to move. Shakily she walked back outside, but the sounds, sights and scents of nature no longer brought her any joy.

GLaDOS had sealed the entrance against her to make the message she wished to convey unquestionably clear. The only things left that proved the existence of the Aperture Science facility and her time spent beneath the earth was the logo stretched across the chest of her tank top, her long-fall boots and the fire-damaged cube still resting innocuously in the dirt a short distance away.

She closed her eyes and sucked in air until her breathing slowed to a somewhat normal rate. Taking a seat on the ground next to the companion cube, she rubbed her temples. Thinking rationally had been hard from the moment she had awoken and had become increasingly difficult now that she was out here in this (possibly) expansive new world. It was certainly a lot larger than any one of the test chambers and Chell was nothing if not conditioned to become intimately acquainted with the functions of her surroundings.

The trouble was, this environment left her with a lot of questions and the pervading feelings of illness that tugged at the edges of her being were intensifying rather than subsiding with time.

She started by yanking the tough stalks of wheat from the ground, running her fingernails through the stems to create rivulets and weave them into a makeshift rope, looping it around the cube in order to drag its weight along behind her. Years of testing demanded that she not leave the cube behind, no matter what. With that accomplished, she had to admit to herself that the self-imposed task had been busywork and she had no further ideas about how to occupy her time, save to pick a direction and start walking, the cube crushing the wheat stalks in a path behind her. She knew she had the strength to carry the cube but the trail was her last hope of a ticket back to the place she was ever increasingly conflicted about leaving behind forever.

* * *

><p>Navigating a terrain that wasn't man made was a task Chell attacked with the same tenacity of solving a puzzle. She began turning in a slow circle to observe the topography of her new surroundings. To the east and west, the sky was the same clear blue, dotted with puffy clouds and merging into a jagged horizon of wild-growing wheat. The north held promises of different terrain; rocks and perhaps a source of collected moisture if the denser forestation was to be believed. She remembered how foliage grew thick in the places in the facility where clean, drinkable water and the ever expanding root systems of edible potatoes could be found.<p>

Inspecting the last fourth of her three-sixty rotation gave her pause. The clear blue tapered to indigo and then to reds, yellows and blacks. The eerie looming shadows spoke of unnatural creations and the vermillion and mustard colours intimated dangers associated with turrets and faulty machines. She turned away from the nightmarish spectacle with determination. That was not a place she would set foot in if she could help it. Turning back to the north, she resumed her plodding forward march.

The journey should have been reasonably pleasant. The air was cool and though she had nothing to compare it to, the weather did not provide any new challenges, remaining crisp but with a warmth to it from the sun. The golden plant life provided a certain sustenance as although they were tough and flavorless to gnaw at they were at least fit for human consumption.

As dusk descended, the sky deepened to indigo and the cool breeze had become a definitive chill so Chell unknotted the jumpsuit at her waist and slipped on the sleeves, holding the collar closed around her neck. Zipped up, it offered a slightly greater amount of protection against the elements but the comfort did not last very long.

Sitting down for a rest on a large flat rock sent a chill through her seat and up her spine. She had been feeling sluggish and tired the whole 'day' but the second the weight was lifted from her legs she knew she had made a mistake. Like sealing herself into a chamber of turrets with nowhere to hide from the watchful lasers or the bullets to come. What was once mere physical discomfort and fatigue had amalgamated into a confusing whirlwind of horrible sensations that she could not name or alleviate.

Her skin prickled with gooseflesh but her brow stood out with sweat that she could feel dripping down her forehead into her eyes which suddenly stung with irritation from the salt. It was all she could do to force her trembling fingers into rolling down the knees of her jumpsuit over the long fall boots. The fabric was not made to stretch but sheer cantankerous determination forced her usually steady hands to work the unyielding mass to her ankles. Her breath caught in her throat.

_Breathe!_

She had never before needed to remind herself to perform such a simple task before in her life. She choked down an audible gulp of air and then held it within her burning and desperate lungs as a noise the likes of which she had never heard before echoed around her.

Chell's mind had no frame of reference for the sound but instinct told her that the long, hollow scream wail was every bit as deadly as neurotoxin or the seemingly innocent chirp of a searching turret. She squinted into the darkness but she couldn't tell whether the blackness that stymied her vision was creating the ominous shapes she saw looming in the shadows until something hard closed down around her neck and something hot that cooled rapidly trickled in rivulets around her throat and down the neck of her jumpsuit. A thick coppery scent invaded her nostrils and her head grew too heavy with blistering pain to hold up while her eyelids did battle with gravity.

Her last conscious thought was that GLaDOS had called her hard to kill and she wouldn't even get to see her finally die. The irony in it was almost funny. Perhaps she was delirious. Either way, she did not get to ponder it at length. Her eyelids finally slipped closed as something warm touched her cheek and she knew no more.

* * *

><p>Although dozens upon dozens of lights from a sea of windows bled illumination into the city gloom, only one person was street-side, his neck craned upward to squint at a blue street sign, its white lettering obscured by a thick layer of combination rust and grime.<p>

The sudden rumble of a lone car making a right hand turn caused the man to begin hopping up and down, waving his hands. The vehicle slowed in response to the frantic attention seeking dance and shifted slowly closer to the curb but did not fully come to a halt until it was a few feet away, as though the driver had been having a great personal debate as to whether or not to stop.

"Excuse me. Could you tell me how to get to Park Avenue?" he gabbled as he raced towards the would-be good Samaritan, apparently too desperate to ask his question to notice that the vehicle's occupant had not yet rolled down his window. The glass began a slow slide downward as the brisk jog brought him parallel with the driver's side door.

"Oh ah, hello there mate, I'm looking for…"

The man visible through the gap in the tinted glass was a tired-looking thirty-something with a balding patch he had tried to obscure with a wispy comb over and a five-'o'clock shadow of stubble dotting his weak chin. He didn't meet the excited and hopeful pair of eyes. "Sorry 'm not a…not like that." He swiftly resealed himself behind his semi-opaque shield and pulled away, picking up speed to leave the stranger in a cloud of dust.

"Oh! No, no, no, you've got it all wrong, I'm not solici—er, looking for work in…bother." Both the man and his car were long gone and the pedestrian looked dejectedly at a paper napkin he held, covered in an untidy scrawl of smudged ink.

"Three-twenty-five, floor eight…" he chanted to himself, casting his gaze at the pole on the corner again "I wonder, does this say Park Avenue or Avongate Park?"

He bit his lip and sighed, turning in the direction the car had come from. His eyes lit up as he inspected the numbers on the buildings, most simply crudely spray-painted on the doors in vibrant reds or whites. He swiftly closed the distance between himself and the building dubbed '325', pressing the button next to the door five times in nervous rapid succession.

"Good afternoon, Lovett Technological Enterprises." The female voice that responded was evidently attempting to sound coldly professional but instead came out high and extremely guarded. "Please state the nature of your business."

"Well I… I have a job interview at five with Mister Lovett. I'm sorry I'm a bit late but I had trouble with the…with the directions so if you could see your way clear to letting me in, please, that would be brilliant, really. My name is Prometheus."

"I'll go check the verification of your appointment." The speaker hissed off, leaving the unfortunate man to dither in worry on the stoop, pressing his back to the door, gaze flickering up and down the street as though he expected thieves and murderers to appear out of thin air at every turn.

"Oh! Um. Mrs. McCree sent me!" he called out as an afterthough, but this last statement was met with a silent pause that seemed to stretch on forever.

His eyes lit up as the speaker finally crackled back to life. "I'm going to let you in now. Push when you hear the buzzer and please make sure the door is fully shut behind you, Sir. Mr. Lovett's office is…"

"…Floor eight." Prometheus echoed along with the woman, opening the now-unlocked door just enough to squeeze his slender frame inside and pushing it immediately closed after him. The carpet was an ugly brown shag and a hand-lettered sign was cellotaped to the metal lift doors, proclaiming them 'Out of Order'. He headed for the stairwell.

Floor eight was punctuated by the same ugly brown carpet, a large dark spot of what might have been coffee puddled outside the door. Another buzzer earned him a few dull thumps and the click of a flimsy push-button door lock, the sort which released when you turned the handle from the inside.

"Mr. Prometheus?"

The man seemed to have been struck temporarily dumb, but he gave his head a little shake. "Yes, Ms…"

"Kwan." She held out a hand for him to shake which he took, giving the appendage a limp twitch that resembled an out-of-water fish in its final death throes. If the woman had any thoughts to express on the matter she seemed expert at ignoring them, turning with a groan and a hand in the small of her back for the weight she carried in front of her. "As you can no doubt tell, you are auditioning to be my replacement."

Prometheus tore his gaze away from her face with its almond shaped eyes (brown), caramel-coloured skin and jet black hair tied up in a ponytail. It traveled down to take in the rest of her. "Oh. Yes, yes of course. Lovely. With the...this…and all." He gestured vaguely towards her pregnant form. "I'd like to be considered, would be brilliant. I sort of lost my last job but ah, not a problem, not a problem, got a reference, that's supposed to be a good thing and all."

Ms. Kwan gave him a strange look, watching as he stumbled over to take a seat in one of the chairs that adorned the office and picked up a magazine which he opened to a random point, his eyes making every effort to drill a hole into the glossy pages. There was something off about him, starting with the intense stare he had given her. It had been unnerving but not threatening, almost as though he were searching her face for something he wanted to see. Even now while he gave every impression of being fully engrossed in what he was looking at, his eyes determinedly remained fixed on one point rather than the normal roving back-and-forth of even the most disinterested reader.

It was with a sense of mild relief that she acknowledged the entrance of Hank Lovett from the back office.

"Mr. Prometheus?"

The man jumped, fumbling to both catch the magazine which had slipped from his fingers in shock and stand up at the same time, looking nothing so much as analogous to a new born colt struggling to coordinate all of its four limbs at once.

"Please step into my office." If Mr. Lovett was perturbed by his interviewee's sudden attack of nerves or ungainliness he did not show it, standing aside to usher Prometheus ahead of him into the room beyond with a sweep of his hand.

The door clicked shut behind the duo.

"Have a seat just there." Hank crossed the room and pulled out one of two chairs facing his desk, taking a seat in his own on the opposite side and plucking a single sheet of paper from surface of the desk, shaking it straight to read it. "Now let's see."

Prometheus took the seat, his lips turning down in a worried frown as he recognized the pathetically short resume that his former employer had helped him write before pointing him in the direction of Building 325, Floor Eight, Park Avenue…or whatever the name of the street actually was.

"Your last job was with Eileen McCree in McCree's Deli, was it not?"

The man across from him nodded, staring at his hands, as though to chastise them without words. Hank understood the gesture. When he'd spoken to Mrs. McCree on the phone she had explained the nature of the termination of employment. Prometheus it seemed, was terminally clumsy. Not even the lack of the brave or stupid willing to venture into the current climate to make their own money could balance the losses that Eileen had reported suffering from dropped and damaged food.

"Well, at least you will not be working with any food here." He chuckled mechanically while wondering idly if the man across from him looked so terrible because none of the food he had ever attempted preparing had made it into his stomach.

These days however, very few people actually did look healthy. Hank knew that his own demons aside he was the exception rather than the rule. Things were tough all over, as the expression went. Nonetheless, the man across from him was a different sort of pathetic, his blonde tresses more devoid of colour than simply white-gold and his blue eyes appeared tired of making a constant bid to escape the confines of their sockets. His height paired with his slender, unassuming frame did him no favours and he appeared to exist to take up space without any practical use, much like a fancy curio or a decorative vase.

What prevented him from simply disappearing into the background, height aside was his name. What cruel monster of a parent named their child 'Prometheus'? It was as if the he'd been explicitly designed down to the last detail for the whole world to hate him. What was worse, the man exuded not a lick of self-confidence. Rather, he projected nothing more or less to the world that he deserved every last bit of torment hell could dish out, and then some.

With his potential job candidate still engrossed in his fingernails, Hank chanced a look out the window for an eyeful of the roiling pit of hellish stone the world had become as a reminder of why he was going to hire this man despite every businessman's instinct to the contrary. Years ago, in the days of pioneers like Cave Johnson, one could afford to be picky. These days, simply being willing to provide a service to the community made you practically invaluable.

"We'll start you in filing, Mr. Prometheus. Please take these forms back out to Cyndi Kwan in the front there and we'll have her showing you the ropes on Monday. Welcome to the team."

Prometheus' smile was wan but he retrieved his resume and the two stapled pages with what was presumably a grateful if not nervous air, exchanging another wet noodle hand shake, readmitting himself to the 'lobby' and presenting the papers to the pregnant secretary with a small but not unnoticeable flourish of the only pride he had heretofore exhibited since his arrival.

"Congratulations Mr. Prometheus. Please arrive at ten minutes before eight Monday morning. I trust you can make your own way home?"

Prometheus gave a swift nod. "Oh yes, thank you, I promise I won't be late. I'll remember, write it down ah…something like that. Shan't forget, see you soon!" he continued to babble pleasantries and words of thanks. The strains continued down the hall and into the echoing stairwell long after the faux-wood door had swung shut behind him.

* * *

><p>"It's rust." Prometheus pointed out as he ran his hand along the paint-chipped black banister that adorned building 325's chilly, concrete stairwell. "Plus I think that went smashing. Did get the job didn't I?"<p>

He paused a moment. "Of course I bloody well tried, I don't have an option here!"

He let himself out of the building, turned to watch the door click shut behind him and started down back to the corner at a rapid clip, his expression turning both simultaneously scared and stormy, hands stuffed in his pockets and his mouth working overtime as though he were attempting to get a word in edgewise with himself.

"But…But…Well I…I can't talk now, people are ruddy well staring at me like I'm a bleeding moron!" He exploded at the top of his voice, stopping in the middle of the street and throwing up his hands.

There was a scuffling noise behind him and he wheeled to see a thin woman with a mop of unprofessionally teased two-tone hair racing away from him down the street as quickly as an individual wearing a pair of lewd thigh-high boots and a stretchy red micro-miniskirt could manage.

He turned away from the diminishing uneven beats of her rapid retreat and turned his head skyward to address what appeared to be thin air once more.

"Yeah. I know I am."

Prometheus completed the remainder of his walk in relative silence, jamming his hands back into his pockets and keeping his gaze glued to the horizon line as he made the mercifully short walk back to his own dwelling; a block of buildings earmarked as simply 'D'.

A thick skeleton-style key gave him admittance to the front door with a short winding staircase carrying him up to the second level. The painted metal door crudely fit with a lopsided mail slot had D-2 scraped through the paint in jagged block alphanumeric glory. The same key fit into the hole here, twisting to the left with a heavy clunk to grant admission to the space beyond.

In the little alcove that made for his uninspiring entrance hall, Prometheus toed off his shoes without unlacing them, shrugged out of and hung up the tweed jacket he'd put on for the interview, un-tucked his shirt and narrowly avoided treading on a small lumpy package the action of opening the door inward had sent scooting along the rough-hewn wooden floor boards. He bent to retrieve it, ripping the attached note free with a squeaking groan of stressed clear tape, unfolding it and squinting blankly at the scrawls of black ink scratched across its surface. He did immediately recognize his name and he slowly read the note aloud to himself, haltingly sounding each word out.

_Prometheus: Starving yourself won't do you any good. Regards, E. McCree._

The man opened the paper to reveal a nine-inch oblong sandwich, filled with several thin slices of ham, some even thinner slices of cheese, a hastily hand-shredded lettuce leaf and a small dollop of yellow mustard. He smoothed out the corners of the wax paper with a fond smile for the butcher, perhaps one of his only real friends in the Detroit Sectors. He had been lucky to have met her when he arrived in Sector Five. She had helped him find this flat and had given him his first job, showering him with almost parental kindness that few had ever afforded him as far as he could remember in his own life span.

Her husband he had met only once, he apparently worked for city wide defense which was practically a full-time job. It was a hushed but well-known fact that that Eileen ran some off-base (and for that matter, 'off-government') security detail herself, banking on her husband's position to push the boundaries of the already dubious laws.

His upstairs neighbor posited among a slew of other ideas that quite unfortunately seemed to hold potential degrees of truth; Mr. McCree and Eileen had chosen their respective careers because Mrs. McCree was barren and could not have children. She also had a wide variety of theories that both husband and wife were secretly working on reviving any number of ancient military projects.

Even with all the things he had seen in his lifetime, Prometheus was rather loathe to take the side of a self-titled physician and admitted conspiracy theory enthusiast.

As if in synchronization with his thoughts, there was a thump from above him followed by a storm of footfalls bleeding through the paper-thin walls. Prometheus stood from his spot at the table and reached the door just as it rattled around in its loose hinges with a rapid fire knock. He took a deep, nerve-steadying breath and pulled it open, launching straight into a barrage of wordy excuses.

"Hullo Doctor. Now while I know you had your heart set on a chat today, I simply don't have time for one or for a check up right now, very busy attending to immensely important and boring business. Actually, would you believe I'm also eating dinner. Yes, that's quite right, I am eating my dinner and drinking my tea, very serious business, can't talk, lovely to see you."

'The Doctor' or sometimes simply 'M' to many folks in the Detroit Sectors, caught the edge of the door and pulled it firmly out of Prometheus' grasp while he was still running his mouth. She moved forward to effectively intercept the sweep of its path.

Recognizing that he was effectively trapped in his own home, Prometheus let his shoulders slump. "So that said, would you like to come in?"

M herself was a plump ashen blonde who was something of a force to be reckoned with. Her arsenal boasted an impressive pill collection and a crafty manner topped off with a nose for a deal and a good conspiracy theory that bordered on greedy. She was nice enough if you had something that she wanted and as of this moment Prometheus was in possession of two such desires.

"Dinner hm?" she arched one eyebrow slyly, easily elbowing her way further inside and locking her gaze onto the sandwich on the table. Everything about her always put Prometheus in mind of a snake, slithering its way through. "Might be contaminated, eh? You know, you could die if you eat contaminated food. That thing is probably laced with Salmonella. Better let me taste-test it. Just to be on the safe side, you know? People will store anything anywhere these days, so much information has already been lost. What I ask, could be more 'serious business' than that?"

Prometheus gave a huff which he was careful to keep under his breath. He liked Eileen and disliked the fact that M was insulting her work whether knowingly or unknowingly. Bravery had never been his strong suit so he turned over his gift without question, trying to melt into the shadows as the woman gloated over the ease with which she had relieved her victim of what she all too obviously viewed as a veritable prize. Ham and cheese was no great loss compared to some of the other things Prometheus had to hang on to. Perhaps, if the Doctor was satisfied with this victory she would be less persistent in her nightly attempts to obtain the other.

Prometheus' other great strength was denial.

Suddenly supremely unconcerned with 'contamination', cross or otherwise, the Doctor heaved herself into the armchair perched in front of the silent black television monitor and stretched down the side to feel around the floor next to her moth-eaten throne. She flicked back her hair triumphantly as she resurfaced, two halves of a cable connection clutched together in one meaty fist. She balanced what remained of the sandwich on one knee, fitting the connection points together, giving the hexagonal widget that would keep them bound a spin and snatched up the remote, jostling, bending and twisting the cords until the picture and sound emanating from the ancient box met her satisfaction. It was practically a ritual. Every time M arrived she would set up pirated cable and every time she left, Prometheus would mimic her actions in reverse to remove it.

"Sho." She said around an enormous mouthful, one beady eye fixed on the screen and the other trailing up Prometheus' form with utmost interest. To an outsider, the gaze might possibly have been interpreted as amorous but anyone who had known the medic for any length of time longer than ten minutes knew that what the woman found most interesting about sex was not the definition that referred to the act of copulation. Prometheus always felt like she had injected a camera inside of him, one that was forever seeking out all he had ever hoped to keep private. She herself didn't even have enough respect for him to mask her intentions with a clever lie. "You ever going to tell me your real name, Boyscout?"

This too was a ritual between the two of them, an on-going verbal and mental tug of war to gain the precious commodity of information or to defend it.

"Are you ever going to tell me what 'M' stands for?" Prometheus shot back, reveling in the small victory when brows furrowed, jowels wobbled in a scowl and the paunchy face became closed off. She gave an enormous swallow, the over-large and half-broken down glob of food making a difficult journey as a lump prominently straining against the confines of her windpipe. She blinked back what might have been tears from the effort and cleared her throat with a _harrumph_ noise to mask her choking cough.

"Careful there Limey, you're asking for a checkup."

The jibe had the desired effect. Blanching considerably, the man tried to shrink in his chair, his height serving to simply make him all the more noticeable as the balance of power returned to its stalemate status. Any average individual had to be suffering a minor case of serious brain damage or be one step from death's door to willingly allow M anywhere near their insides. Prometheus even could argue that he had many more reasons than simply that to deter the woman from touching him.

Her brief lapse in control forgotten with the final bite of her meal, M crumpled the wrapper and aimed it at her companion's head, the flimsy projectile falling short of its target to bounce harmlessly on the floor. Naturally she did not get up to retrieve the litter. "Alright then, answer me this. Are you still suffering from _Oneitis_?"

"Well, I'm not exactly sick that I know of…"

"You are. Serious business case of _Oneitis_ is what you've got. I see it all the time in my line of work." The Doctor waved a careless hand in the air to emphasize her apparent worldliness and superior mental capacity. "Whoever she…or is it a 'he'? Well whoever they are, they're probably long dead or judging by the fact that you have all the pride of that pile of dog shit I stepped in last week, I'm guessing they hate your guts. So give it up, English. Just a little healthful bedside manner from me to you. You know, as thanks for dinner."

"I didn't ask for advice." Prometheus grumbled, but he knew M was right. Maybe she was right and he was indeed pining (just a little of course), but it didn't afford him any lingering interest in moving on to pursue some other relationship.

The flickering television connection cut through the awkward silence that followed with an ear-splitting burst of static.

"You're a fool, Prometheus." M mumbled, stretching herself in his recliner, her thick set body seeming to ooze and settle in the contours of the chair.

Prometheus sighed. "What about yourself, lady? I mean not that we don't appreciate you because I think everyone does, being that you make them not rattly and sneezy and such like and I especially appreciate you being around since I kind of like getting the ah, what's the phrase? Ah. Impression that my new boss might probably go to you and everyone knows where you live…ah well it's just I'm kind of er..."

The self-proclaimed physician snorted with laughter and Prometheus fell silent with a frustrated and infuriated glare at a scuff mark on the wall.

"That's the great thing about healthy people in a climate like this. It's more of a freak out to be normal than it is to be sick. Everyone needs you. Except you apparently." She leaned over the arm of the chair and Prometheus shrank back, but it seemed M was not about to go after his artful (if he did say so himself) avoidance of her dubious medical ministrations after all. "You mentioned your boss. You know much about him? Anything at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well y'ever met him? Before today I mean. Know anything about his family?"

"No." Prometheus shook his head definitively but as he did, a small tidbit of knowledge surfaced through a sea of memory. "Well, wait. I think Eileen mentioned he had a little, ah…a little girl when she got me the job."

In response, M snapped her fingers, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling in contemplation. "Yeah. S'what I'm talking about. It's something flower. Help me out here. Violet? Lily? Rose?"

Prometheus considered the list of names. "Rose, I think."

"Well look at that, would you? Rose and the Doctor!" She chortled for a moment then caught sight of the expression on the man's face. "No? Not funny? Geez! I thought with you being something British-y and all, that one'd be right up your alley. Are you trying to tell me you actually lived your life chained to a stone with birds pecking at your liver?"

"I ah...yeah. Something like that. Definitely lost my sense of humour. Utterly unfunny. Girls don't go in for humour." He babbled, not entirely sure any longer of what he was saying or if it made sense in context. The name had been bestowed upon him, he certainly hadn't asked for it and he definitely did not have any clue as to the meaning behind it. He was grateful for the mental silence this granted him. Making a public spectacle of himself once in a day was more than enough. He didn't fancy any further conversations within his own tumultuous head and especially not in present company.

It seemed however as though M's statement was merely that: a statement. Her inability to recognize Prometheus' mental cringing for what it was proved she was not truly possessed of any ability to read minds. Her voice took on an unexpected dejected tone.

"Yeah, gotta be tough. Sure the kid's well off. Probably going to live a nice, long, healthy life. Can't argue with that...but man." The physician's expression slid into a frown. As greedy, gluttonous and generally tactless as she was, there was some small part of her that deserved her title, self-imposed though it might have been. "Gotta be hard, being the only girl in your class with a period. Don't give me that look, it's normal…or it was. A long time ago."

Prometheus struggled to compose his face into a 'what are you talking about, I wasn't disgusted' sort of expression. The Doctor was on a roll and not about to be deterred from her rant.

"Fuck it sweetheart, I ain't gonna pretty this up for you. You're a big boy so you 'get' general basic biology, don't you? Ladies bleed out their crotch once a month and if they don't take care of themselves right, that ain't gonna happen. Imagine being the only little girl in your class who actually does because they unlike all their classmates can afford to be healthy enough to lead what should be a normal existence. It's not fair is it? For anyone. It's tough being different, innit it?"

The tall man's mouth was now doing a rather excellent impression of a large mouth bass and still the Doctor barreled on.

"Plus her dad's one of my best customers."

"Pills!"

"Right in one."

Prometheus was too shocked to even register that for once he had been spot on in his own sense of observation. The man sat down heavily in one of the uncomfortable mismatched chairs that served as dining table seats, so disturbed by the revelation to even register the usually off-putting indignation that stemmed from the medic's utter comfort in taking him on a mental rollercoaster. Within five minutes she'd gone from waxing nostalgic over ancient science fiction shows to emotionally lamenting the fate of an innocent young woman to calmly and nonchalantly eschewing even the loosest forms of patient-doctor confidentiality agreements.

"You're the only person I know besides me who doesn't buy my own line of crap, even though I know I literally come in here every night and you let me take what I want." She spared a glance for the sandwich wrapping still strewn on the floor. "I'm getting fatter and fatter off your food. I am sitting in a chair that right now you wish you could kick my ass out of...and you don't...Prometheus." she dragged the word out like a curse. "Why not?"

In reply, he stood up brusquely as though he was about to take her advice about the 'ass-kicking'. He wasn't entirely sure what he intended on accomplishing but before he could make up his mind she held up a finger to stop him. With little recourse to other action, he obeyed.

"That's why I do it English. That's why I do it." She let the fragment and its unclear meaning hang in the air between them while she shifted again to wedge her bulk into a snugger position in the plush cushions. "So, Prometheus. I'm intrigued. Pecked by birds, condemned to hell, am I right? You kind of fit the description but I'll ask again: who are you really?"

"Well, I'm the bloke who rents the flat downstairs from you for starters..." A knock at the door prevented further intrusion into his privacy much to Prometheus' relief. "So ah, there's that door again. 'Scuse me, M." He stood causing the woman in the armchair to scramble for the pirated cable connection, ready to disarm it at a moment's notice.

Prometheus glanced at her, scuttling sideways in a sort of crab-like walk towards the door. He was unwilling to leave her to her own devices. His luck had always been just that shade of poor.

The knock came again more insistently and he realized that whoever was on the other side could already hear the chatter from the set and would not be fooled into thinking that no one was home. He threw caution to the wind and opened the door, his own eyes locking with an opposing set in a shade of dark brown attached to a brilliantly white smile which swam up like a life preserver from the gloom.

Hello Prometheus. Oh. And M." Elieen McCree glanced disdainfully at the woman in the armchair, emphasizing the nickname of 'M' with the dogged refusal to bestow the honourific of 'doctor' upon her.

"Hey." was the only response as the woman, perceiving no threat from the new arrival kept her attention mostly riveted on the boob tube.

"I'm glad you're here." Eileen stood in the doorway, a crease between her eyebrows and despite her size playing almost shyly with the ties on her overcoat. She turned her look of repulsion from the self-titled physician to bestow a much softer and kinder gaze upon the gangling male. "You too, Prometheus. Both of you."

"Oh. Um. Thanks for the sandwich, Ms. McCree. It was really excellent, quite good really with the ham and the cheese and what not. Really, really excellent."

McCree took in the callously discarded wrapper still strewn on the floor and the casual, comfortable state of the other woman who occupied the small space, her eyes narrowing. "I'll bet."

"Well." Prometheus' tall form shifted to position himself between Eileen and M. "I ask again: what brings you by, Ms. McCree?"

Eileen didn't quite ignore the question but although she was watching Prometheus this portion of the conversation was obviously directed at M. "You're watching the news, I see." A quick flicker of an irritated scowl from the figure in the recliner confirmed this. If Eileen was upset by the display of hostility she did not show it and instead began to address Prometheus directly instead. "There's been activity down near the wheat fields. Hybrid activity."

"So?" M tossed the statement casually over her shoulder without so much as looking up. "Not even Prometheus here is that bloody paranoid."

"I'm somewhat inclined to agree. I well, I mean not to disrespect and I sure am no expert, but no one's heard of a hybrid attack for a long time. Even I'm willing to bet that we're perfectly safe around here. You know, with the fences and all. Heck. What am I saying? You helped put them up! Um, I know you put the…the tracking devices on them…the ah, the wolf-thingies too, but we're defended in the city now. No one's seen one close for ages…I mean that's…that's what the news says." He faltered.

Eileen gave him a smile that was at once reassuring and worryingly grim.

"I did help and normally I would agree, almost. We're never a hundred percent safe and I'm quite sure our companion here would agree wholeheartedly with me. There's still strains of the Green Flu out there. We don't know what outsiders or animals could be carrying." Eileen was no more a pixie than the self-proclaimed Medic but she could not ignore the fact that all the fences and military equipment in the world could not protect them from an airborne virus or an infection.

"Hmm-mmm." Came the rejoinder from the opposite end of the room.

"The problem is exactly that. We know that the hybrids have legally become complacent...for as much stock I suppose as you can set in that. They don't move, they've more or less developed their own ecosystem. The only reason they have for migration is a new food source."

You think then that that is a human food source?"

Prometheus raised his head looking to the North where he knew very well what laid beyond. Stretching of road, boiling red sky that turned to blue and white…and a field of golden grain…and…and a facility that continued, without the knowledge of the folks in the Detroit Sectors, to leech its venom directly into the earth itself.

"I'm going to check it out. I can't go without a team and it's block D's turn to come. I want the both of you."

"Well well. Sounds like a fun run. Probably kids, you know. Dumb kids even. Could be interesting from a medical perspective. Can always use new organs, fresh blood, that sort of a thing."

Personally, and to that end from the looks of things, Ms. McCree as well, thought that the most interesting thing about marching into the wild with the doctor was to gauge the time it would take a pack of hybrid wolf-dogs to pick up on the scent of and come after a generous portion of edible meat. Nonetheless there was something about the demand that made the normally cowardly Prometheus want to go along. Not that he had a great deal of choice in the matter. Eileen had agreed to help him (and no one who knew him could deny he needed it) on the condition that when she decided she required the aid of another in one of her projects, then he would comply. He had no choice in the matter.

Knowing this, Eileen McCree turned her gaze toward the tougher of the two customers. "Please, Doctor. I have the feeling that something bad is happening out there."

M grimaced, enjoying the idea that she could string her rival along but trying to mask her interest in the potentially gorier parts of the trip.

Prometheus lowered his chin and gazed up through the curtain of his eyelashes, watching as the two women internalized their frustrations. As the time and the stare-down stretched out, the man carefully and nervously cleared his throat, a small, gurgling half-cough emanating from his lips.

Two sets of eyes jerked sharply toward him and he hurriedly focused on the fibers in his navy wool socks. It seemed to break the spell.

"Well, if we're going then guess I'll need to get my equipment." M stretched, brandishing the remote in the general direction of Eileen and Prometheus and clicking the 'power' button. The television ceased its sputtering attempts to show the news feed and with a grin evidently meant to be cheeky but which turned out rather menacing she placed it on the table, hefted herself out of the chair and disappeared out the door. The retreating footsteps filtered down in a storm through the thin walls and the door to the living quarters above gave a tremendous slam that sent a stream of dust plummeting from the chipped wainscoting that adorned the walls.

Eileen let her breath out in a whooshing noise. The woman seemed not to have realized that she'd been holding it and merely held her gaze blankly at a fixed point on the wall. Prometheus was surprised to recognize embarrassment in the tough, matronly figure. He shifted again, wiggled his toes and realized with defeat that it was probably too late to get away with looking oblivious. He chose to do what he did best in the midst of a grim and awkward silence. He opened his mouth.

"So what do you think. I mean, I always wondered and she won't tell me. What does 'M' stand for, do you think? I mean, people have names and she can't just be called 'M' or 'Doctor'. No one is just called one letter or their profession. Not, you know, normal people, anyway."

Eileen's wall-eyed stare snapped back to business, her tone as brusque and steady as it always was but her eyes smoldering fire as she answered very deliberately, slowly inclining her head towards him. "Medic. M for Medic."

"Of course. Yes that makes perfect sense. What a moron I've been. Right. I must say that is a little disappointing because you know, she's always bloody after me to tell her why I'm named Prometheus and all."

The beat of silence that passed between the two was punctuated by another flurry of footsteps and a soft whirr of mechanics. The butcher's lips pursed into a grim line and she rounded on Prometheus so ferociously and suddenly that he instinctively backed away from her. He might have gone right out the window or ran for the door had he not been stopped by his backside meeting the table.

"I'm surprised at you. Especially. You." Eileen was tall; not as tall as Prometheus himself but at that moment all five feet and eleven inches of her was making him feel something akin to the shame of a child who had been caught picking through his mother's handbag. She was in his face, her muscular chest pressed close into his thin one, a scent of raw meat clinging to her and the air around her like a second skin. "Prometheus."

The use of his name, the utterly defeated and dissapointed tone of the voice parroting the mocking and derisive tone used earlier by the doctor rendered him unable to look elsewhere or tear his gaze away from her accusing, angry glare.

"Listen, I thought you hated…I mean really, you don't seem to have a lot of nice things to say about ah, anyone who breaks the law, um, as much as there is…are…laws….that is including yourself so I guess I understand why that sort of might possibly extend to me and um, I guess I'm kind of not really sure why you're defending y'know, M." Prometheus had run out of things to say and he settled for leaning as far back and away as he could go.

The footsteps were growing louder above them, a reminder that the moment that they would have alone was becoming smaller and smaller. Prometheus' ears strained hopefully but it seemed whatever the doctor was trying to accomplish was something that required time. The butcher's gaze flicked briefly upwards as well. "This is not about M. She's amoral and crude but she understands, even if she dislikes it that all of this has to end. We need a social system that has privacy, social justice and rights! We were close to it before but it's going to be the dark ages all over again if we can't make it right! Do you understand?"

Prometheus didn't, not really, but he nodded just the same.

* * *

><p>The trio descended beneath the earth into the building's car park where Eileen had stashed her van. It was easier to make living spaces out of the old industrial buildings which were anticipated to receive large numbers of visitors and presently provided the citizens of the Detroit sectors with an added steel shell of protection against theft and environmental dangers. The treasured behemoths protected inside were in and of themselves their owners' personal armour against the evils of the world and Eileen's van was par the course if not the archetype of the brand. It was an older model in scratched navy, impossible to tell the make as all of the old tell-tale ornaments had fallen off. Its power locks were shot, but the manual controls slid steel reinforcements home with satisfying clunks from the inside. To Prometheus' great surprise it was M who commandeered the back seats without question or complaint, leaving Prometheus the luxury of the front compartment.<p>

"Can you give me a reading on the compass, please?"

Prometheus glanced up at the flashing digital letters in the panel above him.

"N-W. Uh. Northeast. West. Definitely North-whoa! Oh, okay, that's…you turned. Um. N. North. We're definitely going North now." Prometheus' fingers clenched hard into the armrest on the passengers' side door.

There was a muffled clunk and a curse from the back seat.

Casting a shaky glance at Eileen to ensure she was not going to pull any more crazy maneuvers he chanced further garroting via seatbelt to twist in his chair. "Are you okay?"

The Medic, who had been seated on the floor of the van with no seats or belts to strap her in place was flopped over a strange box with what appeared to be a fire hose attached. A ratchet thudded from her shakily relaxed grip to the floor of the van.

"Oh yeah. Freakin' amazing." She rolled off the machine with a grunt and hauled herself to her knees to inspect it. "God help us all if this thing dies on me out here you daft bitch."

"You're fine then. I'll ah…" Prometheus turned back around, a thought more immediately worrying than an argument breaking out between the two women tugging at the edges of his forethoughts.

"We're not going to be walking into…meeting up with any hybrids on a personal level are we? Because that just seems to be a really, really terrible idea. Just, generally walking into a place where things want to kill you, even if they seem asleep or um, dead, sometimes…they're not?"

The van came to another screeching halt in reply. Something heavy – either the Medic or her strange contraption - thudded against the back of Prometheus' seat. He himself was thrown into the jerking resistance of the harness that kept him from a continued trajectory through the windshield glass.

A cacophony of cursing rose up from the back but they seemed to be coming from or he seemed to be sinking underwater for all the clarity that reached Prometheus' ears. They seemed to be in the middle of a nest of Hybrids: a marvel of species adapting to a world gone mad. The past few years had not been kind to the earth and while the human race had put itself first, the remainder had done their own work to ensure the continued strains of their DNA would remain on the planet.

Prometheus was beginning to be able to make out the individual shifting shapes as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. They were swarming something, fighting with each other as much as whatever unfortunate thing they had managed to pin beneath their writhing black mass of claws, fur and dripping, salivating mouths.

Eileen took charge, plunging her hand down the front of her jumper and extracting a small silver something which flashed in the wan light of the rising moon. She placed the tip into her mouth and her cheeks flared out as she released a harsh puff of air into its depths. The creatures jumped, squealing and backing off, low and hunched, heads turning fast and wild in every direction.

"What did you do that for?" Prometheus squealed. "Now they know we're here and I am really not very comfortable with that idea!"

"Dogs were the pets of humans once and wolves prolly're able to hear higher frequencies as well." McCree explained, shucking off her seatbelt and dumping a .44 Remington pistol into Prometheus' lap. "Try not to shoot yourself in the foot."

Instead of being gracelessly fumbled, the weapon only gave a pitiful bounce off of the velour cushioning of the seat. The door was already open but in the next second Prometheus was back, fumbling for it desperately. He fired off two shaky and entirely inaccurate shots, the bullets sending puffs of dust up when they glanced off the ground. They were not wholly without effect as the creatures scrambled in confusion, breaking the ranks around their prize.

Eileen's eyes went wide as she recognized what Prometheus had seen first. There was a person, bloodied and scratched lying prostrate on the rock.

"MEDIC!" she howled, one hand reaching for her shotgun, her knife, anything.

"In a fucking minute!"

Barely registering the reply, the butcher fished in her pocket, closing uselessly first around the dog-whistle, then mercifully around her multi tool. She flicked open the hard flat blade she used to neatly de-bone small fish in her store, hoping it would at least keep her defended until her mind was back in full working order.

It took an extra split second to realize she had deployed it in her pocket.

The howl of pain that rent the air was enough to make one of Prometheus' wild shots jerk off of its' erratic course and straight down the open muzzle of an approaching beast. The wounded mutt screeched like a banshee, its snout plowing into the dirt, the tang of filth mixed with oozing blood attracting the attention of a few of the hungrier and greedier omegas of the pack, willing to settle for the less valuable and more easily obtainable meal.

Miraculously the contused and bloodied figure now free of its assailants was sitting up on the outcropping of rock and was fighting back, or attempting to. Her eyes were wide, she was bleeding in several places and she would likely not last in her current state for a great deal longer. Nonetheless for every creature that approached her in the chaos, she did her best to fight it off and fling it out and as far away from her as the limits of her rapidly waning strength would allow.

Prometheus' mind spun. He watched Eileen drop to her knees and yell in pain, her own circle of the beasts crouching low to the ground as they contemplated how best to rip her to shreds. Another cluster was becoming more confident in the increasingly enfeebled attempts of their original target to defend herself effectively.

One long bony finger tightened against the trigger.

"If I miss I'm really sorry, truly I am." Prometheus closed his eyes and pressed one digit against the trigger in McCree's direction, only to have his shot fire harmlessly into the distance as he was knocked off course.

"Moron!" hissed the Doctor, her voice carrying back to Prometheus as she bore down on the butcher, one hand clamping the lever on the hose-head of her contraption awkwardly down while the other pumped bullets from a pistol with far more accuracy than the gangling man still struggling to right himself. "Get the damn girl! We're FINE for fuck's sake!"

A red haze flashed in his peripheral vision as heeding the doctor's commands and throwing caution to the wind, Prometheus darted forward, snatching the woman on the rock up in his arms. She was light and did not put up any kind of resistance. Perhaps she was exhausted, perhaps she counted them as the lesser of two evils.

There was a smattering of gunfire suddenly behind him and he saw a wolf-dog poised in attack position lifted off its feet and sent sprawling into a crying, whining heap a few inches away. He ran faster, blindly streaking in a linear path towards the forms of the Medic and the Butcher, both of whom were standing by the van, the latter miraculously unharmed. They were both screaming and yelling a auditory slurry of words that he was unable to process as words. Instinct alone kept him focused on his course while only dull yips and squeals of pain where the bullets of his defenders found their marks wound their way through the blinders the rest of his senses had erected.

He exploded through the back doors of the van, cracking his chin on the scratchy floor and causing his precious cargo tumbling into a ragdoll heap. The tail end of the vehicle dipped at some point near his legs where the doctor scrambled in behind him, then there were three dull thuds and the merciful safe roar and forward momentum of the van engine thrumming beneath his chest.

M's mud encrusted boots stomped their way into his line of vision, her hands stretching and pulling the injured woman's limbs. She let out little gasps of pain as she was arranged onto her back, the hoarse noises inspiring Prometheus upright to his knees.

He crawled forward towards the two, only to get pushed back down by the Medic. "Stay away!" she warned, hauling the hose from her backpack around.

It passed within a millimetre of Prometheus' nose before he realized she was not intending on attacking him with it.

Ignoring his reaction the doctor grunted as she pushed the lever heavily forward, emitting a groan from the internal workings of the machine. Prometheus silently cheered and urged the device on, his eyes following the thin but steady drip of blood welling from the wounds on the thin body shaking feebly before him.

M pumped the handle again, her squat form rocking fully onto her knees while her free hand reached about to smack the power source on her back with a wide, flat palm.

The machine sputtered once, twice and finally red gas hissed forward from the open end of the nozzle.

"HAH!" M shouted, but her victory went without further praise as Prometheus' attention was caught up by the astonishing sight of seeing the flesh wounds close, scab, scar and repair into seamless flesh that seemed not to even boast a trace of its earlier abuse.

"It can heal a wound? Any wound, I mean?"

"Y-uhuh." A touch of annoyance coloured the doctor's tone.

Prometheus was struck dumb by the novelty of what he had just witnessed until he saw the first twitch. A small jerk of a single finger at first and then the entirety of the woman's body started to writhe, her fingers coming around to rub at her stomach, twisting to her side, the curling and uncurling of her joints seeking relief against the rough texture of the bottom of the van.

"Fuck!" M swore aloud.

"What's wrong with her! What did you DO!" Prometheus grabbed for M's shoulder and shook it back and forth.

"Gerroff me! She's a bloody addict you dolt and she's in with-FUCKING-drawl!" M paused to suck in a breath and knead the flesh in her lower stomach,res evidently struggling with a stitch. "Eileen…get us the hell home. MY home!"

Prometheus didn't dare to touch her but hovered like a distressed humming bird around the perimeter of the spectacle, wringing his hands as the suddenly surprisingly adroit medic shone a light under her patient's drooping eyelids, pressed her ear to the left side of her bosom to listen to her heart and ran her hands through limp, damaged hair follicles.

The apex of her study ended at the woman's mouth, lifting up her upper lip to peer at the teeth which were not brilliant but certainly not over run with decay either. "Huh. That's weird." She mumbled, then craned her head to look at Prometheus. "I'll say this for you: you sure picked yourself a doozy."

"What?" The man was genuinely surprised. "What do you mean?"

"What I said before. Oneitis. This is her. I mean it was obvious…but a junkie? Guess you're lucky it hasn't messed up her teeth but that'll be Aperture for you. Don't know what you're going to get. Guess that's one for the 'truth' pile."

"How did you know?" Prometheus asked stupidly.

"Because no one in their right mind goes running off into the middle of danger for someone they don't know. Not even a saint, n'you are no saint. I mean, this is your girl am I right? Miss Hates-Your-Guts-But-I'll-Wait-For-Her?" M didn't even look up.

Prometheus sat back on his heels, leaning his side half against the backside of the vacant front passenger seat. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that."

* * *

><p>The woman's body was vibrating with the tremors that ran along her limbs. Her hands and legs jerked spasmodically on occasion, her breathing erratic. It began to slow to the point of no more than little puffs in the crisp air the malfunctioning heater in the vehicle couldn't keep from seeping through the cracks. Sometimes the only proof she was alive was searching the air above her lips for that hint of condensed vapours pouring forth.<p>

"Oh no no no, don't you die on me." M gave the side of the woman's body a sharp shake. "Come on, let's hoof it."

Eileen did not need to be told twice and she swung the van in another sharp 90 degree turn, jostling them spectacularly and eliciting another worried noise from one half of the peanut gallery.

"Don't you think we should be more gentle?"

"No." Surprisingly the dissent didn't come from the medic but from Ms. McCree. "Every second counts with a wounded patient."

The remainder of the ride back to the apartment block was more of the same, driving fast and furious but mercifully uninterrupted through the deserted streets. The woman jerked and twitched, buffeted by her own traitorous body and the rocking movements of the vessel beneath her.

"What's wrong?"

"It's fucking bullshit is what it is."

"MS. M! PLEASE!"

"That's 'DOCTOR' to you!" the woman snarled. "Look, I don't KNOW. I have a clue but until I have my equipment I'm running on lu-" She looked up and took stock of the look on the man's face. "Fuck Prometheus. Alright. I'll tell you what I do know. Anyone else and I'd say she's a client of mine who wandered off in a fit of drug induced depression to die. However we know there's nothing North of here and I don't know her or even how the hell she got out that way but she's newly off the drugs isn't she? You don't know. Of course you don't. She is. Trust me. I don't even sell old Aperture adrenals. I like my clients to live long enough for repeat business."

"I could have you put away for that." Eileen glanced into the back seat through the rearview mirror and Prometheus was glad that vicious gaze was not leveled at him. He'd personally rather not contemplate the pain associated with losing a hand to a butcher's knife.

The Medic didn't bat an eye. "I could have you put away for some of the ordinance you keep separate from your little vigilante pseudo government group. Point is, I need to treat her with equipment that will do more than heal flesh wounds.

Prometheus wrung his hands. "You can though. Treat her I mean."

"Think I can." She leaned forward and smacked the former test subject full in her face. "Wake up you. We're nearly there. Don't quit on me until I've got a chance to try."

Prometheus' hand twitched but remained in his lap.

Getting the woman up the stairs proved to be less of a challenge than getting her to the van. The other residences of Living Establishment D were used to oddities in their stairwells and left them alone, even with the Doctor shouting orders at them from a stairwell below since her bulk would not allow her to squeeze into the stairway with them. Mrs. McCree and Prometheus however were both up to the challenge and within seconds they were at the Doctor's flat on the third floor.

"Stick her on the table." The Doctor took this moment to barrel in past them.

The physician's apartment for the few times it had been necessary for Prometheus to see it had never been welcoming or homely, but it was almost always contrary to what he expected. It was bathed in white and with a dozen cabinets, sterile surfaces and most unnervingly a stainless steel work station in lieu of a coffee table set up in the middle of the most prominent public living space.

They put the woman in the jumpsuit on the table, Eileen hovering on one side and Prometheus on the other, watching helplessly as the patient twitched and spasmed violently yet with a pathetic wriggle in the aftermath that caused both man and woman to lock eyes and look away lest they start weeping at such an inopportune moment. Behind them, the Doctor shuttled bottles in and out of cupboards.

"PINCH HER!" she would roar every few seconds when the erratic thumps that accompanied the twitching began to slow.

Prometheus leaned across and faltered.

His companion performed the duty, earning her a rewarding jolt from the pathetic creature at their mercy and the butcher's gaze met Prometheus' with tears threatening to spill over the edges.

"I'm sorry." the older woman said. "I don't like it either."

Beyond them a box crashed to the ground spilling a rainbow of various tablets across the floor. For once the Doctor did not notice the mess it was making of her workspace as she dodged potential tripping hazards with a small bottle clutched tightly in her grasp.

Prometheus watched as she wrenched it open and plucked out a small oblong capsule which was pinched innocuously between thumb and forefinger. There was something about the colour of the thing that caused Prometheus' sense of foreboding to increase. One half was blue and the other orange, transparent with what seemed to be a gas churning within the confines.

Without so much as a warning, the Doctor slipped the capsule between the helpless girl's lips, pinching her nose closed. She gasped and gagged and the second meaty hand came down on her throat, rubbing gently until a small but obvious lump rippled visibly against the skin of her throat.

"That's a girl."

"What did you give her!" Prometheus demanded, recovering himself a split second too late.

"Trace amounts of arsenic, mixed with adrenaline inducing hormonal supplements, methamphetamine and just a pinch of a very strong hallucinogenic drug I developed myself based off some old Aperture ideas. I call it Soma. Very _Brave New World_."

Prometheus stared at her.

"You might call it 'neurotoxin.' Deadly in the wrong hands but here –"

She got no further. The reaction was instantaneous. Prometheus cleared the examination table, his long legs taking him clear over its occupant without a trace of his usual clumsiness. The Doctor backed away immediately.

"You MONSTER! She's not some bloody experiment!"

Eyes wide, M barely managed to dodge a flying scalpel that Prometheus had seized straight out of a nearby jar of iodine. It bounced off the window sill handle-first, leaving a sizable dent in the wood and a large chip in the white paint.

"You're hoping to kill her and…and…cut up her body like some biology frog! They were always working with frogs! No! Deer! She always talks about deer! Birds too so maybe a bird!" he was shouting and snatching up items at random without looking at what they were.

Not for nothing had the Doctor lived her life for this long. She regained her nerve and charged the flailing Prometheus like a bull baited by a matador. Catching his upper hand in her wrist, she twisted it down with relative ease, or so she anticipated.

At once, Prometheus resisted and M nearly avoided getting her finger bones snapped or ground into powder by the sheer luck of letting go in surprise.

The two stood, nose to nose, staring, Prometheus' expression softening as his expression melted from incensed to terrified. The Doctor for once was wide-eyed and speechless, wheezing from the effort of the fight but still attempting to get him to look directly at her. Prometheus's gaze determinedly avoided hers, too obviously guilty.

Predictably the Doctor recovered first, backing away from him, but not from fear. She was laughing, a mildly nervous chuckle now but building up as she continued. "Well well. I always knew there was something damn weird about you...but I never knew it was this weird, or this damn for that matter. All this time me nabbing your food and thinking I'm so clever when I should have seen the obvious. You're not even human!"

Eileen dropped the chair she'd evidently picked up in an effort to dispel the fight. It clattered to the floor and Prometheus looked over at her. He'd completely forgotten she was there at all.

The Doctor's laughter had progressed from incredulous and nervous to manic and outright hysterical, clutching her sides in mirth. "I'm learning so much about you tonight!"

Prometheus' looked from one woman to the other to the miraculously silent but still very much alive form on the examination table.

"Please." He choked out, his voice desperate with begging. "Please don't tell her."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Prometheus

**Status: **In Progress

**Fandom:**Portal (2)

**Rating:** T

**Genre:**General

**Warnings:** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

**Pairings: **There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

**Summary: **The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

**Disclaimer: **The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

_Between the suffering and the will,_  
><em>Which torture where they cannot kill; <em>  
><em>And the inexorable Heaven, <em>  
><em>And the deaf tyranny of Fate, <em>  
><em>The ruling principle of Hate, <em>  
><em>Which for its pleasure doth create <em>  
><em>The things it may annihilate, <em>

- Excerpt from_ Prometheus_ by Lord Byron

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 2<em>

Prometheus's brain ran through a million thoughts like a hamster on a wheel as he tried to find a way to somehow take back what he had just done and erase all that had been revealed in its wake. The words however were lost to the currents of air that circulated the room as keenly as the odd blend of silence and noise that now pervaded his senses. He could not help but feel a sense of deja-vu, being surrounded by women, all of whom were far more clever than him and none of whose thoughts he could presently fathom.

The Doctor had vanished, but he could hear her moving about in another portion of the flat, her footfalls accompanied by some vague bumps and jangles, along with a peculiar sucking noise. With a second building surge of panic he began to wonder if she was searching for some weapon powerful enough to damage him with, but that thought was at least mercifully quashed.

The reason for her disappearance became readily apparent when she arrived clutching two precariously balanced ceramic mugs in one hand and a small handful of something that rattled with every step she took.

"They're multi-vitamins, relax. I don't self-medicate." The Doctor made a production out of putting one coral-orange coloured oblong shape between her lips, pursed them to blow vigorously into a cup of what was apparently black coffee and quaffed a small sip. She presented a second cup of the beverage to Eileen along with the same orange pill while sitting down too heavily with a waspish hiss for the splash of dark liquid that crested in a wave over the lip of the cup and fell to stain a blossoming patch of darkness onto the leg of her beige trousers.

Prometheus quailed further into the confines of his seat, figuring that somehow this too was going to turn out to be his fault.

"Don't you know that coffee's also a drug?" Eileen asked, an uncharacteristic bite of sarcasm in her tone as she deliberately fixated on the Doctor's face, determinedly looking at anyone else, especially in Prometheus' direction. Until now she had been picking at a lump of fluff stuck to her jumper.

"Equally as problematic as anything else if used in excess and improperly." The Doctor shot back, waggling the pill in front of the Butcher's nose.

Eileen sniffed the pill once, wrinkling her nose at the unmistakable tang of the strains of iron, zinc and other supplementary vitamins that could be ingested by humans before accepting the offering without further complaint. She knew as well as anyone that in the perma-night of the city, getting certain things (including quality meat) by natural means was an anomaly. In light of recent revelations, neither of them bothered to apologize for not offering a drink to Prometheus.

Not that he would have asked had he the capacity to ingest it in the first place. The hamster running on the wheel in his head had gone from frantic to gunning for a heart-attack. As his companions settled themselves the seconds were ticking rapidly by until the inevitable turn in conversation to the events of the last few hours. He wanted to run but he found himself glued to his seat, to the very room itself as though by a magnet, one which threatened to scramble away the last vestiges of his sanity.

He rather thought he would welcome a bit of madness, come to think of it.

The three found themselves sitting around the body of the prize they had snatched from the jaws of what passed for nature these days. 'Prize' was perhaps an appropriate assessment as she lay there as a literal conversation piece atop the makeshift piece of sitting room furniture.

The Doctor was the first to break the awkward pause. She set her cup down and leaned forward, pressing two fingers to the pulse point in her patient's wrist and whistled out a short blast between pursed lips while her fingers traced the papery skin on her arm, the force bringing a network of veins to the surface in their wake. "I would like to shake the hand of whoever did this. It's impressive."

A haze of raw and irrational anger he had long ago sworn he would never act upon again blossomed behind Prometheus' eyes for the second time that day. He stood up, ramrod straight out of his seat, brought his hand back in a fist and let it fly to land square in the Doctor's nose with an audible, sickening crunch. The actual shock of the fact that he had managed to land a blow made him rather dimly aware of the hands on him that endeavoured to force him back into his seat. They were gentle enough and had an easy time of it as he didn't bother to fight it.

"Wish you WOULD meet her someday!" he hissed, still working in a blind panic. "She'd actually have someone to call fat then." His voice came out in a growl even if the threat sounded pathetic. He quickly regretted it too. "Uh, that is, that is to say, only hypothetically of course because well, I don't really want anyone to die or get hurt or even really be called fat, that's a bit monstrously cruel, don't you think?"

Both the threat and its weakly backpedaled conclusion fell on deaf ears as well, the Doctor lifting the healing gun towards her face and breathing in a stream of red smoke along with a glob of blood that disappeared as the bath of steam hit it, but not before a few errant droplets joined the growing stain on her pant leg. When she could speak again without oozing, she spoke as calmly as though nothing had happened, her fingers moving from inspecting her face to do pushups against each one another beneath her chin.

"So it's a 'her'."

"M, I don't think…"

The Medic waved the butcher off. "I'm not antagonizing him. I need to know what 'She' did."

Prometheus stared at his hands and muttered under his breath a torrent of uncharacteristically silent and acerbic words.

"Are you okay, dear? Take your time." Eileen reached over and patted the humanoid's back, assuming what worked for people in terms of comfort would work on something that looked like one too.

"Spit it out." The Medic chimed in. "Haven't got all day here."

Eileen stood, her face reflecting a building inferno to match the fire she had just put out in Prometheus. "Haven't you got a heart?" she asked. "A little compassion?"

"Tons." The Doctor spat. "Absolute tons. And, unless I know exactly what I'm dealing with all of it is going to be wasted on Prometheus here when his little girlfriend kicks it while we were wasting time. So tell me first and _then_ we can have group therapy."

"Fine M, but…"

Whatever the butcher had been intending to say next was cut off by Prometheus. "I did it…to her."

There was a beat of dead silence.

"Prometheus…"

The powerful pull of the magnet keeping him in the room suddenly broke. The man shot to his feet, his chair rocking dangerously as he brushed by it, racing straight out the door like a thing possessed. All he could think about was getting away. He knew he couldn't go outside and even he wasn't stupid enough to try hiding in his flat. He thundered away down the steps, into the carpark, losing himself among the vehicles and trusting them to hide his height.

He slumped down between a nondescript blue lorry and a black sedan and pressed his palms into his eyes. He was met with synthetic material that was beautifully designed to look like a proper human. Eyes that could express a dozen emotions and skin which alternated from smooth to calloused to weatherworn as his body was exposed to the myriad of elements the world could provide. It could fool a million life forms from insects to beasts to humans themselves, but what did any of that matter when none of it could fool him when he wanted it to?

It was fake.

It was always fake.

Particularly because he couldn't cry.

* * *

><p>Consciousness came back slowly. Piece by piece, sensation by sensation; a painstaking undertaking for Chell as she put the puzzle of her disconnected mind back together. The dull buzz in her ears blossomed into murmurs of unintelligible but distinguishable tones and pitches and reached crescendo in a sharp slam.<p>

"I think I'm going to go after him." A voice swam out of the darkness and Chell's heart swelled to realize it was not GLaDOS.

It was even more jarring to have a second, equally unfamiliar voice respond to the first. "You do that. I think our little friend is going to be awake soon."

On instinct Chell disobeyed the semblance of a 'command', keeping her eyes closed and forcing her chest to rise and fall in the deep, even breaths of feigned sleep. With each one she could smell things; deeply assess the newness, the quality of it. Under all the rest of the scents there was a pervading odour of something resembling ozone and metal but mercifully distinctly unlike neurotoxin or mechanics. It was punctuated by something strong she could not place at all but which she found she liked. The only proper word for it was rich, maybe warm, a little bitter. It felt so different, so very unlike Aperture her muscles actually relaxed, though they snapped back up taut as a bowstring when such a minor shift caused them to ache in ways she had never felt before.

Feeling gooseflesh rise on her skin and her blood creep towards boiling point despite the neutral temperature of the room, she could still feel the maddening pin prick points that marched up and down her body just beneath her skin like the shimmering spider-like nanobots Wheatley had so vehemently berated for their 'discrimination'. They were less intense and somewhat less frequent, much easier to file away under 'ignore' with some of the worse sensations she had experienced. The pit of her stomach served for an issue that called for more immediate attention. It knotted and unknotted in a dull ache overlaid with a hunger which she had never felt so intently or desperately before.

Without any predilection or command from her, her stomach turned over with some unease. Just as she was pretending the enormous groan it gave had not reached her supposedly slumbering ears, one of her muscles spasmed violently. In shock she sat up, staring in frustration at her traitorous leg.

"Well! Welcome to the land of the living! How are we feeling?"

Chell snapped her head up in response, her usual determined glare sliding into a rather unflattering gawping stare of disbelief. She had not really been expecting to see anyone at all of course, so used was she to receiving orders from some faceless entity working from behind a speaker.

Realizing the lapse in her stoic façade she shut her mouth and organized her expression into its usual stoic glower as she began to take proper stock of the stranger. It was a human (A real human!) to be sure and one she was sure she recognized by voice as having helped her from the blurred agony of the past few hours. Nonetheless, if her second, if successful, bid for freedom had taught her anything, it was that putting her trust in others never worked out well for her. If Chell had been aware of the expression she might have thought something like: _Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me_. Formal understandings of colloquialisms or no, the sentiment was certainly there.

"Well don't thank me all at once!" the woman huffed, folding her arms with one broad hip jutting out in agitation.

Chell found herself watching this in wonderment. She herself had pantomimed this very thing to express a similar sentiment while Wheatley preached at her from his many wide television screens from on high, or when she felt that GLaDOS was being particularly annoyingly imperious with her. Where exactly had she learned such a thing if she could not remember any other humans from whom to learn it? Fascinated by her first taste of humanity, or at least her first in her living memory though she was, she had to deliberately refocus herself when she realized the newcomer was continuing to speak.

"Let's try this again. Do you have a name?"

Chell held her glare steady, but she could feel heat building up in the corners of her eyes like the burn of getting an accidental noseful of neurotoxin. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision before she could fall victim to the shame of having her long-practiced mask undone by one simple question. No one in her living memory had actually ever bothered to use her name or even try to ask her what it was. Finally someone had actually expressed interest in such matters, (even going so far as to speak as though she had a choice in the matter) and she couldn't even answer them.

The woman's eyes crinkled together in the middle between the eyebrows and her lower lip curled up into an unmistakable sneer which turned into a whoosh of breath that puffed her cheeks out. Chell decided she looked a lot like a turret when it flared out at the sides and half expected her to start spewing lasers at her from her eyes with reckless abandon any moment. She did not have to spend a lifetime amongst her fellow humans to see this person was now most definitely upset with her.

"So can you just not speak or are you actually stupid?"

Being quite well equipped for acerbic commentary, Chell pointed to her throat and shrugged. She wondered if this person, like GLaDOS, simply hoped to antagonize her; to provoke her into an angry outburst or a flood of tears. Whether this was indeed the case or not, she had certainly come close a moment ago with the question about her name.

"Can you write?"

She shook her head 'no' once more and the woman threw up her hands in exasperation, her face craning toward the ceiling. Chell too was rapidly becoming increasingly worried, if not frustrated herself. This world was already in many ways much more complicated than any of the tests or winding corridors Aperture could throw at her. Whatever this person wanted obviously didn't involve an ASHPD.

When the woman turned her back suddenly and she found herself free to search her surroundings, Chell realized with a chill of dread that she was in more trouble than she could have dreamed. There was no Portal gun anywhere of course but compounded on top of that misfortune, her cube was nowhere to be found. She was completely at the mercy of this cold, clean white and metal place which she was becoming increasingly dissatisfied and leery of, human occupant or not.

Grabbing a plastic bottle filled with some kind of fizzing liquid from another table the woman held it out to her patient who took it between her thumb and forefinger as gingerly as though she had just been asked to hold a venomous scorpion or a particularly slimy and overlarge bug.

"Drink it. This will settle your stomach. You take it slow and while you do that, I'm going to talk and you're going to answer my questions with a shake of your head, 'yes'," she demonstrated. "…or 'no'. I'm a doctor. In fact, I'm the _only_ doctor, or 'M' if you like. The point is, if you don't like me you're going to have a lot of work finding someone else to fix you up. Word to the wise kid, you need my help bad."

With no recourse the former test subject nodded very slowly and dutifully took a small sip out of the bottle. It was sweet and caused her tongue to tingle slightly but it tasted like nothing else she'd had before in her life. She couldn't put a name to it of course but it was definitely worlds beyond the precious mouthfuls of clean water she had boiled the germs away from using some well placed refraction cubes. She felt, in light of this rather unprecedented gesture of 'kindness', perhaps she could give this woman a chance to say her piece so she continued to drink, admitting that the ache in the pit of her stomach was starting to subside a little bit.

"Alright. So Prometheus tells me that you two have a little history and that he was somehow directly responsible for the reason you're not feeling so hot right now."

Chell gave a short jerk at the name 'Prometheus' and coughed a little on her ginger ale. It certainly didn't escape the Doctor's notice.

"Whoops! My bad!" the woman's voice fluttered off into the higher registers. Chell didn't think she sounded sorry at all, but she also couldn't guess what she might have been apologizing for, who this Prometheus was or what his hand had been in causing her to suffer so badly. She'd only known six men. Four were actually metal balls. One was a disembodied voice which for all she knew might have been a very deep-voiced female. The sixth and only human was dead and had been so for a very,very long time.

"Tall blond fellow?" M held a hand above her head to demonstrate someone of a much greater stature than herself. "Big blue eyes? Briti—er—wait you probably wouldn't know an English accent if it fell into your lap….sort of a weird accent?"

Chell shook her head emphatically in bewilderment. This puzzle got more complicated with each passing second. Just as she was having that thought, another interjected. She began to wonder: could 'Prometheus' possibly be the mysterious person who had drawn all over the factory walls? She changed her answer to a shrug instead.

"Interesting." The Doctor tapped her chin. "I did promise I wouldn't spill old Promethus' special secret. I suppose I could let it slip accidentally if I thought it would get me somewhere, but we'll leave it alone for the time being. Let's move along. I thought you might be some kind of junkie at first but that's not it is it? You have no real idea why you're so sick right now, do you?"

Chell scowled again. She did, sort of. She wasn't stupid after all and both antagonists in her life had made it painfully clear that they would like to see her six feet under, or perhaps more accurately in a pile of indiscriminate organ mush. The former test subject may have had some pride in her abilities but she knew not even she could have hoped to escape successfully without some kind of negative effects on her health, physical or (as Wheatley had been so good as to constantly remind her), mental.

Were you…force fed some kind of drug? I mean, were you ever given anything that you were told would alter your mood, your abilities or your mental state?"

_You could say that_, Chell reasoned and nodded.

"Now we're getting somewhere! Let's see. Adrenals, I'm guessing."

Chell didn't recognize the word. She tried to convey her confusion in her expression, pursing her lips and twisting them, bringing up her hands and shoulders in another shrug.

The Doctor took this in and rolled her eyes heavenward again, this time without annoyance. She met the other woman's gaze and narrowed her eyes, squaring her shoulders back and drawing herself up in her chair slowly like a cobra preparing to hypnotize its victim.

Quick as a wink and before Chell could mentally prepare the question sunk in quicker than the most venomous fangs.

"What about…Neurotoxin?"

The reaction was as instantaneous and as high-octane as though an entire round of bullets had been emptied into the heretofore calm and reasonably quiet room. Chell's hands fluttered in desperation for the portal device that was still frustratingly absent while the doctor scooted her chair immediately backwards, looking somewhat nervous for the first time since the one-sided conversation had began

"I figured that. This other medic. This 'She'. Yes, I know it's a woman, Prometheus told me that much. She's the one who forced you to test these dugs. I know it wasn't Prometheus, but you do know him since he freaked right out too, just like you did when I mentioned Neuro—-now don't fucking panic again, I haven't got any and even if I did, I've already done all the work to get you out of danger of dying and I already fixed up my face once today! I'm not about to waste my own time! Sit down!"

Chell had reacted with violence again, trying to get up off the table…and do what? M's words cut through her like a knife, reminding her with awful clarity that she was still at someone's mercy. She settled herself back down, not quite sitting and supporting herself on her hands, ignoring the aches in her muscles that the action caused.

"It's definitely not Prometheus though, That I can say for sure, so I don't exactly know what the hell his problem is. It's not like he could have even suffered the same way…" She trailed off suddenly, apparently pensive again. "I don't agree with giving patients something they don't want either but you can't deny whoever they are, they've sure got style."

Chell's stomach chose that moment to clench painfully again. The nanobot-spiders living in her skin were back as well and although she tried not to let it show on her face, she found herself being pushed back down to a resting position with minimal resistance from her increasingly traitorous body.

"I like that you're pretty stubborn." The Doctor's face grinned down at her. "It's a good sign for me and you. Between us girls, I think you're going to live. I'm going to give you something to sleep again now. It'll take care of those itchy creepy crawlies you've got going on."

She grinned at the look of surprise on her patient's face.

"I told you, I'm a doctor. I know what I'm doing."

With that, M fished another orange and blue capsule out, this one different to the one she'd had to force down Chell's throat earlier, its contents boasting tiny white granules instead of swirling gasses. Her patient squirmed backward like an inchworm toward the headboard of the bed, away from her hand. The similar (if distinctly less violent) negative reaction towards the presentation of the thing that Prometheus had demonstrated earlier made M wonder if there wasn't time for one more question.

"Something about this thing bothers you?"

A definite nod from Chell's end.

"First of all, you have to take it if you want to feel better. More importantly I promise it won't harm you, but could you tell me what the problem is?"

Chell took the capsule in her hand gingerly and pointed first at the blue side, then at the orange half that fit into the first.

"You've seen something like this before?"

A frown and a shake of the head followed.

"No pills? Ever?"

A nod this time, followed by a more insistent jab at each half of the pill.

Something clicked in the Doctor's mind. "The colours then? Blue?" she jabbed at the blue half. "And orange?"

This time there was rather emphatic nod from Chell's direction.

"Of course, I suppose you can't tell me why."

Shoulders slumping, Chell resigned herself once more to the frustration of her mute condition.

"That's okay." The Doctor said. "Trust me. So far you've been helpful."

Chell put the pill in her mouth, shifting it to the side.

"Ahahaha…you don't want to bite that or…"

It was too late. Her teeth clamped down and a dreadful taste filled her mouth. It took every last inch of her willpower to wash the foulness away and not choke on the bottle that was held flush against her open lips with one of M's meaty fingers clamped on the tip.

She was just barely aware of the bottle being removed as the haze of sleep rushed to claim her once more.

The last thing she heard was three loud thumps.

* * *

><p>Eileen followed the sound of heaving sobs and found Prometheus with his back pressed against the wall, head in his hands. She watched his shoulders shake for a few moments then cleared her throat.<p>

"Prometheus…"

He jumped, his face hard and angry but free of any evidence of crying. "That's not my…I mean um…" he trailed off, his eyes darting back and forth.

The butcher decided to play dumb and ignore the tell-tale stammer of a hastily and poorly covered lie. "I don't see how you could have possibly hurt the poor girl!"

"I did! I did it! It was me!" Prometheus howled, his voice echoing around the cavernous basement, amplified and thrown back at him by the concrete. His face awash with fresh pain, he pressed his palms into his eyes as though by doing so he could push the protuberant orbs all the way back into their sockets. Maybe in the vain hope that they would never again have to look upon the world and see whatever imaginary evil he deemed he had imposed on it.

"Well no matter if you did or did not, you've got a better chance of helping her and making amends if you speak with M. She needs to know what happened and she's the best shot we've got at helping her." The Butcher dropped to one knee, inching slightly closer to the man.

"She'll try to murder me!" he whispered.

"Who? M? I doubt very highly she really felt threatened by you at all, that rather spectacular punch aside. I sometimes wish I had the guts to do it." Eileen joked lamely. She felt even if she had been making a real effort to humour him it probably would have fallen flat at this point.

"Not the Doctor…" Prometheus raised his hand and looped the wrist around in a vague gesture, but Eileen got the message.

It gave her pause. She had not considered this perspective, even if it seemed unlikely. Prometheus always did have a flair for the dramatic at the worst and best of times. If the girl was really that dangerous then they would have a lot more to worry about down the line. For the present however she was likely safely incapacitated.

"I don't think she's in any condition to try to murder anyone."

"You don't know her. I don't even see how she couldn't want to. Kill me, I mean. She probably wouldn't hurt you at all. I was…" he made a gulping noise that fascinated his companion in spite of herself. Whoever had designed Prometheus had made the illusion of his perceived humanity down to some truly spectacular details. "I was a…a…"

She waited.

"…a monster." He whispered, curling even further into himself, fingers wrapping themselves around his legs and long arms almost reaching all the way around to clasp at the back as he pulled himself tighter into a man-shaped cocoon, every fibre of his artificial being still working in desperate futility to produce a human facsimile of grief and self-hatred.

Rocking forward on her knees, Eileen put one hand out, tipping up his chin and looked into his eyes. She would have had trouble believing Prometheus to have severely injured anyone (his outburst upstairs aside), but the wide, frightened and painfully tormented gaze spoke volumes. No human, or whatever manner of construct Prometheus really was, could look like this and not be honest. His was not the look of a soulless monster. The blue eyes held almost anything but evil in their depths.

"I don't believe a word of it."

She moved her hand to his shoulder blade and so scooped him into an awkward hug, made more awkward by their positions and the surrounding cars. He didn't exactly flinch away but he also had nowhere to go, so it was dubious progress at best. This close to him she could actually hear little whirrs and clicks underneath his skin, suggesting he was indeed artificial and probably mechanical. Another sweep of awe caused her to press her ear more closely, edging out the pang of guilt for invading so much of his privacy.

"I…" Prometheus' voice was so low Eileen wasn't sure she'd heard it. "I want…" he repeated, louder this time but still extremely hushed.

The woman nodded. "Go ahead."

He paused and made another nervous swallowing sound. Eileen could feel a hot hiss and another slight whirr to accompany this, a cooling fan placed ingeniously placed to simulate a nervous expulsion of breath. Suddenly the whisper came out all at once. "My name. I want to tell you my name."

She waited.

"I don't care, I won't stop." He snapped suddenly. The words seemed out of place, almost as though she'd tried to stop him.

"I won't force you."

"N…no. I want to." He repeated, dropping his voice again to the barely audible tones of before. "Wheatley. It's Wheatley. I'm Wheatley."

"Wheatley?" she wasn't sure she'd heard him right.

He nodded miserably and then looked up at the ceiling. "I don't care!" he roared, causing Eileen to rock back in shock. He blinked at the ceiling, listening to the echo rebounding back again, once, twice, three times before fading away and leaving them in silence once more.

The butcher stood and offered him her hand. He scrubbed nonexistent tears away from his face and took the proffered appendage with the expression of a man about to face the firing squad.

* * *

><p>Prometheus got to his feet gingerly, taking Eileen's outstretched limb with so little force that he had to stick out a hand to save his backside from meeting the concrete before he could be hoisted to his feet. He looked like a first-time ice skater struggling to get purchase on the flimsy blades while clinging to a hand-hold made of the finest crystal.<p>

He remembered the satisfying crunch of the bones in M's nose beneath his angry fist and let go of the butcher's innocent human fingers in an unfounded panic, flinging out one arm in a balancing arc, only to be stopped short by a loud crunch as he made contact with the side of the blue lorry.

"Oh bloody hell!" he moaned, snatching his hand back and watching as the dent in the side of the truck warped and snapped back with a loud creaking pop that joined the echoes of their voices. "This is a mess, I am not doing this right, am I?"

Eileen favoured him with a somewhat weak smile that he returned with an equal lack of enthusiasm.

"This is not going so well. Definitely not going so well. I am trying to fix things here, really!"

The other woman patiently endured a great deal of wobbly maneuvering but before too long Prometheus finally found himself marching in a two-person military procession, watching the one-two beat of the heels of the woman ahead of him. He put all his concentration into not to breaking his gait, not putting too much distance between them, for fear of increasing the trouble he already knew he was in and for abject terror of the idea that he would be for any length of time left with the company of his own mind and the Voice that inevitably occupied it in moments of silence.

The spike of righteous anger he suddenly felt even through this methodical focus surprised even him.

He was bad at keeping secrets. It was part of his programming to wear his heart on his sleeve, especially if he was scared. He might have been a fool, he might be labeled a moron but in spite of that the Voice had made the decision to use him. Him specifically. He had not asked for it and so it was not his fault for being an imperfect tool.

Besides, he had been compliant up until now hadn't he? He had been willing to help, to go along with, to obey without question. To prove that he was useful and willing to spend as many lifetimes as it would take to prove that he was sorry for all the wrong he'd done in the past. A tiny part of him had hoped beyond hope that perhaps somehow it would be enough. How could he have predicted (moron, remember?) that anything would come along to complicate things, let alone a resurgence of the catalyst for his current situation.

His twisted moment of hot rebellious anger mixed with barely contained self-loathing was barely cooling into a steaming pile of smoldering embers when he began to feel the Voice gnawing away like a viral worm at the rotted apple that comprised his mechanical mind. Normally the Voice was silent in the presence of others but right now he could feel its approach acutely: a tangible storm of rage building and running through every circuit.

He did not have to wait long. With a cold, bright chill, the Voice thrummed through his brain. His companion was blithely unaware as to its presence but to Prometheus, the deep sibilant hiss was as close and personal as the proverbial demon perched on his shoulder.

_Well you certainly have managed to blow that one nicely, Prometheus. I suppose you thought you were clever, telling that human woman that name? Wheatley is deleted. Remember how I was kind enough to point out the metal ball to you, showed you that husk of a barely programmable bundle of wires spinning off into the furthest reaches of the ether? The circuitry is dead, the programming erased from that shell. Would it make you feel better if I said he was dead? Wheatley is dead._

Prometheus scrutinized the nuances of his expression in the reflection of the mirrored lift wall, trying to keep his face a careful mask of neutrality. He decided the straight line of his lips looked well enough but his eyes kept creeping over to meet Eileen's. He refocused them on his shoes instead, tracing the curve of his trouser leg, the laces poking out, the lip of the rubber sole where it curved over the edge to meet the terrazzo floor.

_I'm going to make sure that we don't have any more secrets slip before we can accomplish my goal. I'm going to make very certain of it, Prometheus. _

Prometheus could feel every servo and motor in his body start to shut itself down in fear as the promise was repeated. Anyone else would say that a voice in your head could do nothing and a voice in a head…in another head…with two heads to get through…was even more helpless. Like a flea on a dog, one might argue, the canine's questing paw could come down on that pesky itch at any time, extinguishing it.

The main problem with fleas was that they infested their target in droves. There was always one itchy little bastard popping up to take the place of the old like a Hydra. Caroline wanted her facility back from GLaDOS. Not just her facility but Aperture itself.

Prometheus saw Caroline as the lesser of two evils. If Caroline and her machinations were discovered, then what would stop GLaDOS from extending her arm to find a use for him? It was best to play along, to bide his time, to let Caroline find out for herself just how useless he was. If he was lucky she might give up on this foolish, crazy plan. He was not one for deep thinking; he had made that abundantly clear to himself and to anyone who had ever known him with one accidental taste of raw power.

His eyes involuntarily locked with Eileen's again of their own accord. _No_, he decided. Wheatley was not dead. Not as long as someone knew he was here. He was just sleeping, like Caroline had been and when the time came, he would wake up. Prometheus was just a place holder.

The lift gave him a swoop of simulated vertigo as it settled into its destination on the third floor.

* * *

><p>Her patient out cold once more and breathing evenly with only the occasional twitch and jerk to show that she was still under the influence of the withdrawal symptoms, M located a broom and began to stick it into the mercifully pristine corners of her lab to retrieve the precious medication she had dropped in her race to try to save the life of this strange, if interesting woman.<p>

She wasn't exactly complaining; the girl had turned out to be something of a font of information, particularly in regards to this 'other' Medic who was lurking around somewhere, making a mockery of her practice with slaves or hostages or whatever she was doing. It irked her that this 'She' was better, more frightening and clearly had access to better supplies. The strokes of her broom became volatile, sending capsules spiraling across the floor from the once-neat pile.

She almost missed the three quick knocks at her door, almost didn't go to get it, presuming Eileen had retrieved Prometheus from whatever weird Prometheus-based neurosis he was suffering from this time and the two would let themselves in momentarily.

The knock resounded again more insistently and she flung the broom to the floor with a clatter.

"Keep your fucking pants on, would you?" She stomped to the door but composing her face and demeanor into something fundamentally less childish as she arrived on the scene, peering through the peep hole. "Oh mother fucker!"

Her view afforded her a peek downward into a feathery nest of baby-bird downy brown hair and the barest protrusion of a pert nose and long sweeping eyelashes which flicked up and down patiently. M pushed a large hank of hair backwards from her eyes, let out a long, cleansing breath and opened up the door slowly. "Hello Rose."

If the young girl had even heard the sharp grind of the doctor's teeth she didn't acknowledge it and instead held up a brown paper bag. "I've come for Daddy's prescription. I have your payment, right here."

"Right." M tried to close the door, keeping the girl both literally and figuratively on the outside but the keen eyes were too quick and followed the pathway they were afforded into the depths of the flat.

"Who is that?"

In spite of herself, the Doctor chuckled. "Well, she's real sick, kiddo. She didn't take her pills right so now she's paying up."

With the natural morbid curiousity of the youthful, the girl crept closer to the form lying prostrate on the table. She was smart enough not to touch anything, at least not in the presence of the crafty old Doctor who, while discreetly pouring the recovered medication back into a bottle had evidently recovered her footing.

"So Rose, what's the good word with Hank?"

Lovett the younger raised her head at the mention of her father, just in time to clumsily catch the bottle hurtling through the air towards her.

The girl scowled deeply at the other woman, but it came off as childishly accusatory. "I'm not paying full price for these."

"Really, now?" M purred.

"I saw you pick them up off the floor. They're dirty and I won't give them to Daddy. I won't pay full price."

A flash of almost primal anger crossed M's face but it was gone in the instant it had come to be replaced with cool disinterest. "I see. Well I guess you're going to have to march back to Daddy and tell him the bad news then! Such a pity!" she held out her hand for the bottle in the frustrating way that she and perhaps from the youngster's perspective all adults had when they knew the complaints of those in less of position of authority were being made in futility. "I'm sure he'll applaud your candor! Or, he will in spirit while he's lying here next to my new friend." She gave the hand of the girl on the table a proprietary pat.

Despite being intelligent for her age, the extent of the Doctor's vocabulary eluded Rose. She clutched her paper bag closer to her like a life preserver, unwilling to either part with it or the thing she knew full well stood between her father in full health and his reduction to the state of the poor soul at the mercy of this den of ill-begotten medicine. Haltingly, she handed the bag over but her sharp eyes glittered with a promise that this was only a battle won and not the conclusion of the war.

"Atta girl, Rosie. You keep trying." M peered into the bag with an expression that reflected something far beyond greed, something that caused both sets of eyes to drift up to the single homeliest looking thing in the entire place.

The cross stitch hung in window, the lights of the city illuminating the colours in eerie repose. No matter how obscured by bizarre shadows the thing became at any hour, the message was always able to be read from any point in the apartment, gazing down with as much scrutiny and power as the statues, totems and gargoyles that watched over hallowed grounds.

The words 'First Do No Harm' could in their need glower or smile kindly out of that little pillow_, _a cross beneath them in babydoll pink instead of the classic red. The muted pastels stood clear against pristine white wool that seemed to repel the grime rather than attract it.

Giving her head a little shake, M met Rose's eyes and gave the young girl a dazzling grin that was at total odds with the storm cloud that had just passed. "So. About your Dad. I've been hearing big things about the company. Seems our Prometheus is going to be working there, am I right?"

"How come you always ask me things you already know?" Rose trotted after M like a puppy, watching as she reached around the corner to place the bag in the next room, then started to rinse and organize her collection of iodine sterile tools.

"I don't know everything. We got a little side tracked." The Doctor jerked her head quickly towards the sleeping woman, wrung a washcloth out, scrutinized it and wrenched the 'hot' tap a quarter turn so that the ancient pipes protested and eventually a fuller stream gushed forth. She sat there expectantly, two fingers waiting for the temperature to rise to her satisfaction.

"Daddy says they're going to be starting 'big things' soon."

M raised an eyebrow at this somewhat disappointing statement, wondering if the girl was withholding information out of spite for the outcome of their earlier exchange. She watched Rose a moment longer, snatching her hand from the sink with a yelp of surprised pain, her distraction having let the water surge on from hot to scalding.

"Big things?" she mumbled, sucking on her fingers.

"Yes: 'Big things'." She sighed in a combination of 'hurt' and 'worry' that was palpable. "That's all he'll tell me."

M's mind siphoned through all she knew about Hank and his aspirations. "Sounds like him. I know he's interested in starting up his own economic revolution around here. Probably getting a running start on all that. C'mon, give me a hand here." .

Wringing the washcloth out again, she held it out to the girl who retrieved it from the outstretched fingers with a curious expression. "What do you want me to do with this?"

Taking her by one shoulder, M marched Rose back toward her patient, her free hand moving to grip one delicate wrist in her own.

Rose pulled a face. Giving a wriggle of mild discomfort, she tried to free herself from the rather uncomfortable vice that held her prisoner,

"Your hands are cold!"

"All the better reason for you to help me out with this little job then. You know I specialize in the flashy stuff and have no heart at all, or so I'm told. At any rate, she's filthy. Wipe her face off and try to get some of her arms too. She probably won't wake up. Probably."

Gracelessly, M manipulated the young girl's hand and the cooling washcloth to her patient's forehead, giving it a rather rougher than necessary rasp across the skin. The older woman's nose gave a twitch as though she were about to sneeze violently in her sleep. Rose jerked away, but when the sleeping patient made no move to rise from her slumber and throttle her or swallow her whole, she began swabbing again at her forehead, lifting a layer of dirt to reveal clean, natural tan skin beneath, underlaid with a mild rosy hue from the effort of removing the grime.

She was pretty, Rose decided, but she didn't look like a happy person. She traced the lines around her mouth and the space between her eyebrows with a corner of the towel. Even in sleep they were furrowed slightly, giving her a pinched, rather dissatisfied look.

"Doctor?"

A noise of muffled assent came from the next room and an instant later the woman's head peered around the door, jaw working away at something in her mouth. She swallowed.

"What happened to her?"

"I told you…" the Doctor was cut off by the reappearance of Eileen, Prometheus with his chin tucked as firmly into his chest as it would go, giving the floor a good, long once-over. "Ah, found him did you?"

"Hello Mrs. McCree and Mr. Prometheus." Rose's voice choked off into nothingness as she caught Prometheus' gaze who was staring rather blankly at her as she attended to her assigned chore, the swipes of her washcloth brushing haphazard zigzag patterns across Chells' nose and eyelids as the young girl and adult man faced each other in a distorted dream version of a classic movie '.Mexican standoff\. Each was poised to strike if necessary but unlike the cowboys of chinzy Westerns, it seemed that it was not a question of who would shoot first but who would give the other a reason to back down.

Eileen glanced at Prometheus and the young Lovett girl but her focus was on M. Yanking off her boots and unceremoniously tossing them in a heap she crossed the room and firmly grabbed the other woman by the elbow, ushering her off to parts of the house unknown, leaving behind only a grunt of protest and the clatter of the tweezers she had been scrubbing in the metal bowl of the sink.

As though a spell had been broken, Prometheus walked towards the girl and Chell, barely seeming to notice the uneasiness in her temporary nursemaid. Rose backed up a step, gazing up at him with some trepidation and a great deal of confusion. Normally she liked Prometheus alright, in spite of not really knowing him very well. He'd always just been there, talking and sort of clumsy, hanging around the building and sometimes talking to M. It had never occurred to Rose for it to be otherwise, after all, apart from M being, M, she and Mr. Prometheus were neighbours.

In the background, the Butcher and the Doctor seemed to be deep in the throes of a full out argument, the muffled shouts barely reaching their ears through a crack in the door. Neither Rose nor Prometheus were intent on deciphering their meaning or significance.

Rose finally broke the silence, her hands folding and refolding and twisting hanks of the cloth before remembering herself and trying to apply herself to the task of cleaning off the womans' face once more. "She's a friend of yours?" she inquired, tipping her head to one side to try to meet the downcast gaze.

Prometheus nodded vigorously for quite some time, even though neither his head nor his posture became fully erect. The effect would have been somewhat comical had his expression not befit the bedside of a terminally ill relative. He finally replied, a short, cracked and wholly out of character monosyllable. "Yes."

"…and I'm telling you, I'm quite within my rights! It's my own home for starters and if someone wants to be here its their own prerogative! You know I have strict ideas about what and who I give that stuff to!" M's snarl was almost hysterical as she burst into the room, her face the colour of a boiled lobster and her hands making unusually frantic gestures.

"That is not the point! " Eileen who was also worked up, a sheen of sweat visible on her skin and spots of colour on her cheeks so bright it looked as though she had put on some incredibly thick rouge. "The point is that you are dangerous!"

Perhaps it was a trick of the light but the Doctor almost seemed abashed. Finally, she returned to the sink, barely looking over her shoulder while she snapped commands, rubbing her hands vigorously in the spray and slowly but surely sinking back to her usual calm and sardonic command of her surgery. "Please don't fight in front of my patient, Prometheus your friend woke up. We had a nice chat – or as much of one as we could have. Eileen, I think you'd better…"

She was met with the kind of utter silence that is associated with something monumental and generally very bad like: 'look out for that giant vortigaunt behind you' or 'I think the witch heard us'.

Slowly, she turned around just in time to see Rose bolt away from the examination table, the patient struggling to a sitting position as the washcloth drooped down from her face to dangle briefly on the end of her nose and finally fall forgotten amidst the folds of the old blanket she'd been covered with.

Her eyes roved about, passing over the girl with no noticeable softening to her obvious nervousness, her posture becoming more and more defensive as she took in the multitude of people standing around her. Her gaze however was pulled, like a the tracking beam of a turret locking onto its target toward the tall man with the blonde hair.

Just by looking at him, she knew he was the Prometheus the Doctor had spoken of. Her gaze softened, she tried to pour feeling she wasn't sure how to express out through her colourless eyes, to ask all the questions she wanted and needed to ask, maybe even to reassure him.

_Are you the man who drew the pictures on the walls of the facility? _

_How do you know Aperture? _

_You helped me, didn't you? _

_Do you consider us friends? _

_You didn't hurt me._

Prometheus' return gaze could only make to deny the last statement, deep honesty and unending pain pouring forth from his fake, mechanical, but oh-so-very convincing eyes.

_Yes, I did. _

"Prometheus?" Eileen's voice interjected into the silent conversation somehow being accomplished with neither words nor gestures.

Very slowly he turned to face her, breaking the crosspoint of the gaze and bringing the rest of the room back into focus.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded.

"Well, _do_ you know one another?"

Prometheus nodded miserably while Chell shook her head, a look of intermingled frustration and dejection crossing her features.

"How do you know her then?" M pushed.

Prometheus continued to stand there, statue still.

"…Great." The Doctor hissed. "Now you've gone all mute on me too. Of all the days to fuckin' shut up, you pick now. Get out, all of you. I don't have the energy to deal with any of you right now!"

The trio found themselves shoed out of the apartment, a feat which they managed to accomplish even through their mounting confusion with a certain amount of haste, lest M take her broom or worse to them.

Chell strained forward in her seat like a snake towards a charmer for one last look at the retreating figure and the unsolvable puzzle he represented. The door shut firmly in her face, firmly closing the book on the mystery for the present. She barely noticed when the Doctor passed by to deliver a bowl of some sweaty-smelling sort of broth that bobbed with little coloured chunks she was expected to eat, along with another funny orange and blue pill.

She was almost grateful for the pill, though the last thing she thought of before sleep took her was of round blue eyes that morphed and warbled into electric neon azure in the darkness behind her eyelids, then winked out into solid, black, dreamless sleep.

* * *

><p>The remainder of the evening passed in a blur for Prometheus with Eileen returning him to his own room. He was barely focusing on her promise to return Rose safely to her home, as he quickly set his internal alarm clock with enough time to arrive early for work on Monday and stumbled to what served as his bed, even if the illusion of human 'sleep' was no longer strictly necessary now that his secret was out..<p>

He had powered down before the door closed behind Mrs. McCree, so intent was he on escaping the Voice before he was fully alone and vulnerable to its full out assault on his many shortcomings.

Considering that he himself was the most expensive item in the house, he gave little thought to the notion that anything of his would be stolen, the thought of burglary barely crossing his mind as his processors shut down.

He awoke recharged on Monday, spent a short time making himself as presentable as he believed he was going to be and finally retraced his steps to the Lovett office in a haze of self-contained thoughts. There was a hollowness inside his head without a secondary voice adding colour commentary to his actions that he was grateful for, as he could finally let his brain fully process the myriad of things he had heard and seen.

Caroline's threat remained the sword of Damocles over his head but even to him it seemed completely empty. There was nothing she could do without revealing herself to him and she was obviously also hiding from GLaDOS, running the risk of manipulating from directly underneath the behemoth's proverbial nose.

He should have felt safe.

He did not in fact, feel safe. He, or Wheatley if you listened to Caroline's logic, was a product of Aperture and therefore dangerous, no matter how innocuous or friendly it might outwardly seem.

All Prometheus could do at this point was wait and see.

* * *

><p>Cyndi Kwan answered the front buzzer and the office door again but after confirming the identity of the person on the other side, she handed off the door frame to him, entrusting him to enter the rest of the way and restore the room beyond to it's state of 'lock-down' behind him. "I'll be right with you Prometheus." The last words came out as a somewhat pained groan.<p>

"I could have gotten the door for you." Another woman was perched on the corner of the table, dressed in a pair of dusty rubber coveralls that were unbuttoned so the top half hung to her waist and a thick black pair of knee-high galoshes atop it. A long dark plait fell down her back and a variety of nondescript barrettes held pieces of her hair in place around a large pair of safety goggles that gave her the appearance of an overlarge bug.

Prometheus was somewhat glad she hadn't been the one to come to the door. He wasn't entirely sure he could have taken much more shock that day.

"No, it's good for me." Cyndi nodded at her, sitting down and then swiveling her seat around to turn back to her soon-to-be student. "Take a seat. Lynn here is waiting for someone new as well."

"Hi." Lynn gave a short wave that was more of a raised hand from the vicinity of her desk corner, tossing her braid back as she did so.

"Good to meet you."

That seemed to be the end of their conversation as Ms. Kwan turned away, leaving Prometheus to take up his former residence in his plastic chair next to the pile of magazines.

The minutes ticked by as he sat, first listening to the women chatter in the background about someone he didn't know who would be taking Ms. Kwan to M's later in the day for some kind of a check-up on her baby. He grew bored even through his consistently jangling nerves and seized a magazine from the top of the pile on the table next to him. It was folded open to a glossy print-out with torn and dog-eared corners of a wide-smiling woman wearing colourful enhancements on her lips and the eyelids of her stern glass-grey eyes. Even though he'd never seen Chell wear anything like this, and the colours of this woman's skin and hairstyle were all wrong, he found his thoughts turning towards her. He knew her name, or at least some semblance of one. The chassis had allowed him access to her file and he had hoarded every last bit of information. The core Wheatley whose memories and data storage he shared had examined each piece of dutifully filed treasure as he drifted through space, examining each byte of data over and over again.

The word 'redacted' had taken up residence in that file like a parasite, obliterating so many important things, editing and editing and editing it down into an unintelligible sludge of vile words and angry mutterings which became more Her and made the parts that were Chell as unfathomable as the yawing gap of silence that had stretched between the two of them the other day.

The memory of her desperate, hopeful gaze when she had laid eyes on him for the first time kept that silence real. He could not bear the thought of destroying the closest thing to joy his presence had inspired in another human, and Chell to boot. What kind of monster would he be if he revealed himself and ripped that away from her…but then, and such was the crux of his conundrum: was it worse if he never did apologize?

He almost wished for the Voice to answer his question.

"Prometheus?"

He jumped. "Come on. Let's get started."

The woman with the braids and the goggles, Lynn, moved past him to take up his seat, picking at her lip with a fingernail as she rifled quickly through the pages of a few of the magazines in quick succession.

"Have you ever worked with a computer before?"

Prometheus called to mind the mental images of a metal ball whipping back and forth on a management rail to collide in a crunch of glass and sparks with a monitor. He certainly was a far cry from a 'hacker', but having opposable digits to work in tandem with his mechanical brain certainly changed things. "Yes, of course I do! Who hasn't had some experience with computers these days! I mean, I'm experiencing…computers….right now."

"Minimal, then?" Cyndi asked with a grimace that seemed to be hiding not ire but rather, mild amusement.

"Well, sort of. What…what would I have to do? I mean I think I can figure it out."

"Mostly just copying letters and reports. Just basically copying what you see here." She tapped a sheet on the top of a small pile with the glossy brown-painted nail of her right index finger. "And using this word processing equipment to type them, then printing them and filing them according to the number here. All the numbers are written on these files.

Prometheus turned to stare at the rows of filing cabinets he had not noticed before. They all had series of numbers on them. This, he understood alright. Not even a moron-core didn't have a basic numeric filing system. It was rather similar to the test subjects, only with paper rather than humans. Maybe mastering this job wouldn't be so tough. He listened more attentively as the phone and buzzer system and the coffee machine were explained.

"Alright." Ms. Kwan said at length. "Let me see you try."

Prometheus picked up the top sheet of paper, affixing it to the clipboard in front of him. Haltingly, he picked out each letter on the keyboard, pausing once for Ms. Kwan to show him how to make the upper case letters and fix some key he had accidentally struck that made half the letters become numbers.

It was slow going but he was not told to stop too many times and his fingers became more sure as time ticked by.

He turned away from the file cabinet drawer he had just closed and his hand hovered suddenly frozen over his third page.

The man who Lynn had just let into the office was walking toward him, a wide smile on his broad face that Prometheus instinctively shied away from. Not that there wasn't a plethora of other reasons to back away from this newcomer slowly and surely. He looked like he might have another job in some kind of an all-night gym. The coveralls and goggles that mirrored Lynn's did nothing to hide his burly frame and broad muscular shoulders. His green eyes seemed magnetized to anything with a jutting prow and curving hips, but they also seemed determined to drill a hole through Prometheus.

"Hello, sweetheart." He purred in such a way that Ms. Kwan flushed to the roots of her hair. "I'm here to observe the operation."

He let the strange wording hang in the air as he clasped the pregnant secretary's right hand in between both of his own massive paws.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Cyndi Kwan and this is Prometheus. You'll want to direct your introduction towards him. He's going to be taking over full time in a few days time after his training."

The stranger winked and Prometheus had the funny feeling that the gesture was not intended for Ms. Kwan. His fears were confirmed a moment later.

"The name's Rick. I think we'll be seeing a lot of eachother, sweetheart."

With that, he clapped Prometheus on the shoulder with a blow the android barely felt.

"So this is how it is going to be." He said blandly, ignoring the strange look he received from his mentor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Prometheus

**Status: **In Progress

**Fandom:**Portal (2)

**Rating:**R or T on

**Genre: **General

**Warnings:** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

**Pairings: **There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

**Summary: **The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

**Disclaimer: **The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

"_Which for its pleasure doth create  
>The things it may annihilate,<br>Refus'd thee even the boon to die:  
>The wretched gift Eternity<br>Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.  
>All that the Thunderer wrung from thee<br>Was but the menace which flung back  
>On him the torments of thy rack;"<em>

_- _Excerpt from_ Prometheus _by Lord Byron

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 3<em>

A door swam out of the blackness of the corridor, standing half-open with its solid edge of steel grey metal obscuring the bright, warning beam of artificial light that lay beyond. Chell, buried wrist deep in her portal gun adjusted the index finger of her right hand more solidly against the blue entrance portal trigger, her left steadying the weight even and parallel to the ground. The weight of it was comforting as her course down the hall listed to one side, her body meeting and sliding up against the cold, rough wall, seeking cover behind the door and into the deepest penumbra of the shadow which obscured her from the questing amber trajectory. It flickered back and forth, sweeping within a millimeter of her toes and she rose, beyond the spring of the long fall boots, breathing in so deeply she was sure she could feel the skin and muscle pressing her organs against her back. She released the air slowly as the light shivered mercifully back under the bottom of the door and swept out the other way.

She lowered her hand, the appendage wobbling with more of a tremor than she would have liked, readjusted the gun and let her breath out in a long, nerve-steadying whoosh. Before she could change her mind or second guess herself she darted out from behind her metal shield and locked her gaze, eyes to optic.

As she watched, the relative warmth of the amber stretched and faded, rounding out to a frosty ice blue, but holding no less malice and contempt for her. If either robot who had controlled the chassis at any point was attempting to speak to her, she did not know as her ears were filled with noise: a rushing, blustering wind, although the room was devoid of so much as a breeze. The knowledge of exactly where she had heard that sound took little effort for her to recall, as she thought of it, re-played the scenario in her head more often than she could count. It was the soundtrack to her memory as she was miraculously drawn back in through her own portal and her vision was winking in and out while her lungs begged and screamed for oxygen. She had watched her fingers clawing desperately for what by this point was probably no more than an over-bright star and Wheatley's begging had faded to a fading echo from the broken record that separated her ears from one another.

The portal gun dropped a second time as she raised her free hand to shield her eyes from the glare, which turned out to be neither amber or blue after all but rather a brilliant white-yellow, expanding outward and surrounded not by gun-metal grey but rather pristine white. She blinked spots and the onset of a headache out of her eyes from the harsh overhead light of the surgery she had just escaped her dream to return to.

Blearily she let her head loll listlessly to the side, her chin rasping against the edge of the blanket, a sensory reminder for which she was grateful. The gritty fibers returned her to the reality of where she was, not to mention where she most definitely was not. Around the haze and lazily drifting network of bluish-black holes that the brilliant glare had painted across her vision, she could make out a somewhat obscured scene.

That woman who called herself the Doctor was with yet another new human face, another female whose bulging abdomen seemed out of place on her otherwise slender frame. She seemed not to mind as the doctor prodded, touched and pressed bits of metal against it.

"Well Ms. Kwan, everything seems to be in order here."

Chell let her muscles relax, something that had been much easier as of late, taking less of a toll on her physical, if also to a lesser degree her mental state. She had been relieved when the doctor removed her to the quiet, private room. She disliked the influx of strange people who shuttled in and out of the surgery, their unfamiiar bodies and their enviable ability to seamlessly fit in with their surroundings, the fact that they were allowed to be so utterly unconcerned about technology where she was bound to hopeless ignorance. The place winked with the flash and unmistakably machine-produced gleam of the equipment, but it was alien and unreachable to Chell. She remembered the clunky computers of Old Aperture and the unfathomable creation that was GLaDOS, neither of which existed here.

It was all frustratingly backwards. Neurotoxin was produced by humans and, if M was to be believed, it had also saved her life. Technology was completely in the control of humans. Chell's past had trained her to latch on to any potential threat in an environment and she had immediately taken stock of the others around her with their sleek, tiny personal computers that did their work and, rather than cause them harm evidently made communicating with each other and various other aspects of their lives easier. Once, M had left one of the little square things by Chell's bed. She had tried to get a surreptitious peek at what secrets it might divulge from the corner of her eye. A myriad of symbols covered the screen and for one brief, shining moment she imagined they might be personalized test chamber hazard signs. If they were, they seemed to be written in yet another language she wasn't able to read. The longer she looked, the further she was from understanding them but it had at least been obvious that they were not meant to warn anyone against whether or not there might be acid or bottomless pits in the user's immediate vicinity.

The situation only became more hopeless as she watched those around her manipulate the delicate items with flashing, flying fingers that seemed to blur into a jumbled mess. Short strokes, long strokes, sweeping, pointing. She couldn't hope to decipher how to make these machines work, she was only useful as a destroyer of technology and this was the nail in the coffin on the reminder of how hopeless her situation was. These little items and what they represented about her value scared her far worse than GLaDOS ever could have dreamed it were possible to frighten her. Playing the Aperture Matriarch's game had given her a purpose, a reason to fight and a place in the world; as deeply dangerous as that world had been.

There were good things about this place too though. Vast improvements over the facility, in fact; the privacy she had been afforded by her host was top of the list. She had combed the tiny bathroom top to bottom and found no signs of surveillance equipment. Apart from the one time she had been asked to provide samples of her bodily fluids, it had been wonderful to use a toilet without wondering if a security camera was watching her progress.

Learning to use the shower and clean herself had been another incredible experience, even with the knowledge that her ignorance put her years behind the other denizens of this society. If nothing else, these things were alien but at the least exceptionally more rewarding in their own way than solving chambers had ever been. The Doctor was innately fascinated and prone to using frustratingly large words about things that seemed equally strange to her about her body, (how for example, could she understand why there were now tiny little prickly hairs suddenly growing all over her arms and legs? She had never used the strange little device that removed them in all her life; she'd always just woke up smooth-skinned.) but there was always a mutter of praise untouched by sarcasm for her ears when the lessons were retained.

The regularly delivered three meals a day had been gratifying too at first but their appeal was beginning to wane over time as she began to feel as though she were going soft. Even more than that, she was finding it more and more difficult to exercise her personal sense of discipline. Even now her stomach churned and growled in anticipation, like clock work. Despite her misgivings she always ate what she had been brought in her own, precise fashion: first swallowing the broth and then picking out the vegetables and saving the novelty of the meat for last. She never ate the potatoes, methodically removing the chunks of them from the meal to leave in a military row along the edge of her bowl. Her staunch refusal to eat the tubers made her feel as though there was something she could still control in her life, some aspecct however small that was hers and hers alone.

The voices continued to drone in the other room and Chell felt the need for a bathroom break tugging at her insides along with the onset of her appetite. Unwilling to leave the room while there were still strangers outside, she pushed herself up from her bed and began to examine the small space. She had done this numerous times before while waiting for the opportune time to make the short distance between toilet and bedchamber without subjecting herself to unnecessary scrutiny.

There were pictures on the walls in the doctor's place and they fascinated Chell. Real photographs, not paintings like the many she had seen of Cave Johnson in the basements of Aperture. They displayed people, sometimes with the Doctor in them, others which showed her without. The ones that did not feature her always showed groups of people smiling. Some of them showed her as a person with less lines in her face (younger), more streamlined curves to her body (slimmer). Some only featured strangers. In the photos, people were almost always standing with other people. Their faces grinned up in clusters out of some of the images and stared solemn and proud in stark rows in others.

Her first thought was to wonder if anyone, at any time, anywhere had kept a picture of her so that they could remember who she was. Even the man who had once owned Aperture had had people who, even though he would soon no longer be alive, had felt he was important enough when he was breathing to immortalize in a visual memorial. The remembrance gave Chell a quickly diminishing spike of confidence and hope. If anybody ever had felt she was someone worth keeping a memento of, there was a good chance that they were now probably dead.

Or, perhaps they were not. In the slowly lengthening hours that she was conscious, Chell remembered the blonde man Prometheus and the way he had looked into her eyes, the way she could tell he knew something about Aperture and her imprisonment and the testing. Not only that, hadn't her mysterious artist drawn her own face on the facility wall? Perhaps it was not as life-like as these images were but he viewed her in the same light: worth recording, worth remembering, worth knowing.

It all led back to the same question: was he here?

She had heard the name Prometheus before, of course: chirped at her by a squeaky voiced little turret that true to its' claims, was different. It simply spoke rather than fire bullets.

Wheatley had actively despised the thing but Chell had felt pity. The words themselves had held no real meaning to her back then, certainly nothing worth listening to when there was Neurotoxin to defuse and turret production to ruin. Each time she so much as thought of the man now, the hope that rose in her chest threatened to spill out of her in a powerful rush like a smashed gel dispenser tube. Perhaps she was not forgotten, perhaps she had her own personal place yet to discover and occupy.

She noticed that the murmur of voices in the background had faded altogether, a mere moment before the door to the room creaked slowly open, the Doctor obviously trying to diminish the sound of the squeaking hinges in case she was asleep.

"Oh, you're up already. Very good." Backing inside, M set the tray that as her stomach had predicted, contained one of Chell's meals on the table and glanced curiously at her position by the wall.

"Checking out the pictures?" she asked.

Chell saw no point to deny it and nodded. To her surprise, she was quickly joined by her hostess who jabbed a finger at the one she had been most recently been studying with the small cluster of people. The woman on the far right of the picture was M and it wasn't too long ago, her white lab coat not present in some of her youngest photographs was already under a fair amount of strain by this point. She stood close to a tall man in a wide-brim hat with dark eyes and tan skin. Both had their arms around eachother, grinning and laughing out of the glass to some shared, hilariously funny private joke. Next to her, stood a woman in a baseball-style hat with the bill pulled down over her eyes as far as it would go and her hands shoved into the pockets of an overlarge jacket that hid the shape of her body from view. Upon closer inspection the barely visible mouth was in fact curved the slightest bit upward in an expression that Chell herself had seen on her own face through a portal on the rare (or perhaps not so rare) occasion she had been mildly amused by something particularly asinine that Wheatley had said. The man her mind decided to inform her was the most attractive had messy black hair, big blue eyes and appeared to be the youngest of the group, but his smile seemed distinctly uncomfortable as he stood next to the last man on the left, stoic and not smiling at all, as though he would like nothing better than to smash the face in of whoever had been working the camera. He looked like he could do it as well, the cords of his muscles standing out like cables on his bare arms. As unfriendly as some of them looked, Chell found herself surprisingly envious of them, of the fact that this was a picture of people who could boast of various functional human relationships.

"You know any of these people?"

Startled from her cross examination, Chell shook her head. She considered the response a moment and tapped the image of the younger M, then pointed at the flesh and blood woman beside her.

"Yeah I know, only me. Of course you don't know 'em. Pretty well a shot in the dark. Oh well, it's just my old…platoon I guess you'd call it. Y'know from…um…well there was a real bad bunch of world-destroying epidemics while you were doing whatever. The Combine Incident, the green flu. Most of the people who survived were people who were either lucky or could fight. I did my time and finished my time and now I'm waiting."

_Waiting for what? _Chell wanted to ask but of course she had no choice but to let the subject matter drop. There were no photographs of the myriad of people who filtered in and out during the day and most definitely nothing she had seen of Prometheus. She had looked, not just here but in the corridors and corners she was allowed to access.

What was strange was that the Medic, once so keen to wrangle information out of Chell and Prometheus was now obviously making an attempt to deliberately avoid the issue. She had made it clear that she did not mind Chell's company, even welcomed it by the time she was able to stay awake for longer than a few agonizing hours. Their nights together involved watching stories on a monitor, the conversation naturally one-sided but in general, sparse. M would laugh at things she found funny, snorted at things she found unbelievable and seemed not to care if her companion shared her view.

Chell was indifferent to the stories and the actors but she was grateful for the opportunity to exercise her mind, and the invitation that may if she was patient lead to learning things she needed and wanted to know.

"Coming no-name?" She asked, once again causing Chell to jump. She inwardly berated herself for letting her mind wander so consistently as of late. "There's supposed to be a movie on. I mean, it's nothing new of course, like I told you, everything but the news is re-runs so it goes for movies too. There sure ain't much of an 'entertainment industry' these days."

She shrugged agreeably but her mind was still lingering on the omnipresent issue of Prometheus. She took a seat in one of the padded chairs clustered around the television that the patients never used, watching the screen with only half a mind. Movies and the news were one of the rare times that Chell never had to struggle to understand the back story that whether she liked it or not was often explained to her by her companion.

As it was, it wasn't very worth listening to, not when there were more important things on her mind. She watched as the good-looking men and women and children sashayed across the screen, curving her lips upward in a smile sometimes at the rare joke that penetrated the haze of her cultural ignorance and tuning out the raucous laughter and commentary of her host.

She was just starting to let the lull of the uninspiring piece of cinema lead her towards sleep until she heard the accented voice. Her head shot up and she stared at the television hard, expecting to see a metal ball with a glowing blue optic beaming down at her.

The television steadfastly continued to project a movie with human actors and she realized that M was staring over at her like a curious bird at her violent reaction. With a thrill of dread Chell watched the expression she now recognized as the doctor putting together a piece of the puzzle that was one of her patients, slowly creeping its way across her mouth like a vine.

"Sounds like Prometheus, doesn't he?"

Chell began to lift her shoulders in her now well-established gesture of misunderstanding, but they stopped suddenly half way to her chin and she stared blankly at the doctor.

"Ringing a bell, I take it though?"

Chell nodded miserably, putting her head in her hands. The voice of the actor had been a dead ringer for Wheatley's and Prometheus had (apparently) named himself responsible for the state that she was in, the illness and the wounds that marked her body that not even the strange red gas from the device the doctor owned had been able to erase, but there was one very important difference that obviously invalidated her theory entirely.

Wheatley was in space, Prometheus was here. Chell put her head into her hands, tugging at hanks of her hair in frustration.

"Don't worry. We'll get to the bottom of this for you."

The sentiment, even though Chell was nowhere near close to believing it had been made for her benefit, was nonetheless reassuring.

She was finally going to get some answers.

* * *

><p>If it had not been well understood that Cave Johnson had little to no practical use for, let alone remotely believe in anything that seemed supernatural, let alone anything at all that eschewed solid, believable scientific fact, someone might have speculated he was a fortune teller. While the man was alive, the notion had been laughable but now in the wake of his demise, there was a part of Caroline that wondered if somewhere beneath the madness and the rot of moonrocks in his brain that drove him ever onwards towards death, he had known what might happen to his laboratories, might have somehow predicted that the world would slip into this mess of decay and that GLaDOS would find herself with no human test subjects left.<p>

It was funny to think that way, as Caroline was herself reduced to a part. A small part, but the most important one: the replacement human brain of Aperture. She'd lost sight of that for so very long, been shoved like a mere conscience into a corner and it had taken, ironically, the act of being crunched down further into a little battery with only the power to let one part of GLaDOS the agency to make herself known.

The behemoth she hid from, fled from like a wounded animal to preserve herself from its wrath, the Monster that loomed above and all around her as she crouched within the cavernous, brilliant brain as no more than a silent, poisonous little tumor – ironic. She had always been so worried about tumors, hadn't She?

_SHE_ was no better than the Moron had been; begging, pleading, cajoling, insulting, throwing a proverbial temper tantrum in desperation to get what she wanted out of her partner.

_Put me back in my body, let me get back to testing, now, now, NOW!_

A useless, whining child who wanted to get her way without looking at the big picture.

Pathetic.

A whole facility at her disposal and what had she made of it? A single mouse running in a single maze. A single project which consumed her and she forced it to gratify one need.

He'd called it Euphoria.

She called it Science.

It was the same thing, and it was driving her mad to see their facility reduced to the plaything of an inferior mind.

Caroline was not about to play games and run test chambers and take chances any longer. Oh the Moron had come so very close to costing her everything. Even free of it, she had underestimated the power of the Euphoria. In fact she had, in some cases underestimated his intelligence altogether, but she considered it training. She knew GLaDOS to be the more formidable foe and that a mistake, a mere miscalculation would flush her from a den like a hare beset by a hound. She did not believe for a moment that she would be able to salvage herself a second time.

It was for that reason that she could not extract herself just yet. She had to operate by remote control, and for that she needed subjects to manipulate and a little gift that Cave had so thoughtfully left her.

GLaDOS, to her knowledge knew only of the prototypes: the co-operative testing robots. They would play their part, feeding her desire for 'science'. A facility needed more than just its core and its brain to run. It needed appendages, and Caroline's appendages needed to extend their reach beyond buttons and cubes.

Rows upon rows of the prototype humans were locked into a storage vault. In her mortal life, the former assistant herself had never been down to those particular facilities. The cold metal storage lockers had reminded her of a morgue and the fate that awaited her when she would cease to be Caroline and would become Aperture itself.

In retrospect, from her position in the here and now, such a fear had been all rather silly of her.

The small set of operations which she manipulated in GLaDOS mind would be enough to choose a suitable one but from there, it was on its own. She wondered what it would be like to watch a faceless, soulless robot make itself into a human, and if it would hate it as much as she had hated the reverse being done to her.

Her disembodied vision traveled up and down the rows of drawers, seeking out the perfect creature to do her bidding. The earlier series were still modeled on cores and cubes and turrets; ill designed to infiltrate humanity and resturn life to the facility. Some later groups looked like storybook aliens; human in design but with spindly limbs and unconvincing grayish skin and glassy, cold eyes.

It was only in the last row that she found her target, a humanoid structure with eyes that seemed human enough, though the orbs were presently as cold and devoid of light as those of a corpse right now, staring fixedly upward out of a metal face that was pinched and skeletal in design. That was nothing at all to be concerned about. All of that would be fixed soon enough.

All it took to wake it was the simplest flick of a button. She paused. Every action, no matter how small was potentially dangerous, potentially capable of catching GLaDOS' attention. She waited but the primary optic was fixed on the completion of the present testing scenario, the secondary and tertiary overseeing the construction of the next chambers to come and every synapse of the powerful mind was as ever, wasted on its all-consuming goal: Keep Testing.

In the lady's (as Caroline did still view herself as a lady) private viewing chamber, the creation sat, fingers grasping the sides of its coffin with no traces of confusion or concern for its suddenly mobile and active state, like a doll positioned stiff and upright in the shoebox house she could recall playing with as a young human child.

"Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice a soft, undetectable purr beneath the overpowering thrum of GLaDOS' more powerful motors.

It cocked its head to the side like a bird, listening. It nodded, the motion smooth and humanesque although the circuits and wires that allowed the gesture were laid bare.

"Good. Climb out of storage."

Again the command was obeyed, a triumph of flexing and servo motors and seamless, fluid mechanics. It stood, only awaiting her next command and Caroline quelled the growing impatience she had for the moment when it, like her would be aware that it was forced into this imperfect, horrible and wholly weak minded state, under her influence. She felt a flash of simulated (no, quite real) distaste fill her senses for the hateful thing that she was surrounded with, but she quelled it. After all, she was better than _Her_ and she was, despite the best efforts to destroy her, still alive.

"Walk to the left side of the room. Now. Stand on the platform and put your hand on the control panel. Can you tell me, do you want to change your appearance?"

"I do not understand this command." The android's mouth moved but the voice that issued forth was not identifiable as male or female and as it had no need for clothes it was clear there was no evidence of male or female genitals, although the chest was flat. The lower half bore no opening to suggest a vagina, nor any protrusion to suggest a penis and testicles. Any quality that could have defined this android as something even remotely human was completely lacking. It had no capacity for emotion, no passions, desires or even understanding except as a doll to be manipulated.

A number of ideas and emotions began to cross Caroline's mind as the android patiently awaited its next command and would for as long as it took for her to make her choice.

The first was a complete structure in illogical reason. It was impossible to bring Cave Johnson back to life. His mind had long slipped away before it could be backed up in any form. Anything she did now would be an imperfect copy, a construct she did not have the power to create on her own from her current position. Even then, it was no substitute for the real brain.

The second spark of emotion she had was that of malice and it was this one that she moved forward on. No mere personality construct, no silly mind deserved to take on the appearance of a man as great a paragon of perfection in humanity as the late Cave Johnson, whom she was now very certain would remain immortalized as such.

She did however have one very good idea as to who might deserve the full onslaught of her wrath and this demeaning position.

"Enter the following commands. Synthetic skin, Hue: 01 Hair, Blonde. Gender…" she hesitated a moment. "Male."

The android complied, the skin sealing itself onto the form, giving him the appearance of a human male nearly indistinguishable from its original android form, albeit a man with absolutely no muscle to speak of and a look of utterly incurable wasting disease about his body. Of course, the metal in his joints provided him with the strength of ten, perhaps twenty men, but a person who appeared to be on their death bed had no obvious business outside of a hospital, not without garnering a lot of questioning and stares. Caroline would not bother to change that aspect of her creation qute yet, and so moved on to the next steps.

The surge of intermingled anger and the gleeful proposition of meting out justice rose up in her again

The name was important. Flashes of Douglases and Martins and Chrises filtered through her processors. She had known many scientists, all of them named such mundane things next to Cave, but not a one of these common names felt in the least bit cruel enough to affix to this automaton.

Unless…

She imagined the sort of smile she would smile had she a face or a mouth to do so and was not simply a piece of a mind leeching off a much larger mind. The falsely gentle one she would smile when Cave, in his own way would tell her to fire people. The upward curve of her mouth with lips pressed tightly together as she poured sweet apology into her tone, translating from her boss's unique way of expressing himself.

_You're shit-canned! Pick up your cheques and go home!_

"_I'm sorry but there is no need for your services here at Aperture Science any longer."_

Prometheus would be sent out into the world to steal Science and would for his reward be strung up and pecked by birds, tormented for as long as she felt like. Eternity did sound acceptable.

"Your name is to be Prometheus. Can you repeat that?"

"My name is Prometheus." Still a long flat tone, still a simple statement of fact belonging to a robot.

"You will respond to only this from now on."

"I will."

"Now, plug yourself into the personality download."

The android disconnected himself from the physical construct device and moved towards the personality construct.

"Override the program. Search for the closest Aperture Satellite to pick up any nearby constructs."

"There are three."

"Check for Construct ID23-8-5-1-20-12-5-25"

"Construct ID23-8-5-1-20-12-5-25 found."

"Download Construct ID23-8-5-1-20-12-5-25."

The Android simply peeled back a flap of skin on his wrist as carelessly as removing skin from an apple and hooked the cable into a small, innocuous looking port beneath the surface.

His eyes slid back out of focus and his flat voice began to recite a string of numbers in rapid succession.

_"Zero one zero one zero one one one zero one one zero one zero zero zero zero one one zero zero one zero one zero one one zero zero zero zero one zero one one one zero one zero zero zero one one zero one one zero zero zero one one zero zero one zero one zero one one one one zero zero one"_

There remained a moment where Caroline simply believed it hadn't worked. The face of the droid remained frozen in an almost comical look of slack jawed surprise that did not reach his eyes, the pupils dead. Suddenly, a faint whirring grinding began to build slowly in volume, the sound emanating from deep within his head.

Torn between worry that her only hope of reaching beyond the chassis where she was otherwise stuck might have been a failed project after all and a kind of resurgence of the old annoyance at the ID core; the thought that even booting up was slow for the sphere, despite the much more advanced body.

His face relaxed, the eyes blinked and a very human glimmer of fear seemed to explode into them, all at once like a cluster bomb going off. His body, so sure of itself before the download crumpled, a wail escaping his lips, then his fingers coming up to claw at them, his eyes, his cheeks and down across his throat and shoulders in spasms. He writhed like a worm on the ground, soundless starts of sentences frothing forth as he tried to fathom what had happened to him all in one fell swoop.

"Where am …I these are…I don't remember having…my processor is in the wrong pla—is this APERTURE? Am I in Aperture? Why, how am I back in Aperture! I was just in Space!"

"Wheatley_ is_ in Space. What is your name, Android?"

"Whea—" he began, but a programming response pushed the completion of that sentence back inside him and a voice that was his own and a thought that came from inside his own processor burst forth instead. "Prometheus. My name is…Prometheus."

He'd meant to finish that sentence by correcting whatever faulty bit of programming had caused him to say the wrong name, but none of this made any sense at all right now. His name was not, had never been and never was Prometheus. He was Wheatley. All of his memories were Wheatley's from his old job taking care of humans – yes, all those duties were still in their rightful programmable place and his vainglorious rise to power, yes that was there as well locked away into his memory units – when HAD they gotten _there_? It was all wrong, it was all so very wrong. It was him and he knew it, but how, how, _how_ did he, and when had he, and why was he now _Prometheus_?

"You want answers. You are Prometheus because the Intelligence Dampening Sphere is still moving through space. There is no chance to retrieve it. If you wish, you may track its trajectory on the monitor."

The monitor closest to him showed a sonar, deep in space if the numbers were to be believed of two celestial bodies, one orbiting in a fast gravitational pull around the first.

_The space core_. He realized, dread striking him. This was a nightmare, had to be. Did androids get nightmares? Or wait, perhaps this was android hell…

"Well, if I'm…I'm Wheatley, then how can I be Prometheus. I'm still Wheatley, and for that matter lady, who are you and why are you in my head?"

Caroline scoffed at him, falling into the old, easy rhythm. "Are you so much of a moron that your memory processors have already become full to capacity to push out the memories of one mere battery-powered pot—"

Prometheus shrieked. It was not particularly feminine in sound, but the thrum of it cut through Caroline's consciousness like a real sensation, so violent in its execution that she felt sure that GLaDOS would have felt it.

"I'm not Her." She spit at length, after the moment of concern that he had attracted GLaDOS' attention had passed. "I am Caroline."

He paused, crumpled on the floor. "I am quite sure that I never put anyone else in a potato battery, lady. She didn't tell you to lie and say that did she? Because, I'm…I'm not…well…you know. I'm really not quite that stupid, despite what ah – recent events might have ah, led you to believe."

"You mind is abominably daft, but that is beside the point right now. The core for all intents and purposes is dead and soon will be out of power, a mere husk. Your personality files were downloaded into this new body. It has a limitless supply of power, drawn from the air. It is customizable to look more organic and blend seamlessly among their number, which is exactly what I want you to do. Blend with the humans."

Prometheus seemed to be considering this as a viable option, which Caroline decided was a step forward. "Is this a punishment? To make me a…a human? I…I'm sorry for the Potato, really I am. I mean that. I am really sorry, but honestly I…as much as I wanted to come back from space, it was really…this other person I wanted to apologize to."

Caroline made a snorting sound. It echoed strangely atop Prometheus' own mental functions, but nothing she did seemed to over ride them. It was a little like being back in the chassis, only this voice apart from being female was rather well-spoken, indelicate noises aside.

"Nothing so black and white. In fact, I am almost grateful for the potato. It allowed my consciousness to be freed from as you so crudely put it 'Hers'. I am the true heir to this facility, certainly not you and despite what 'She' would tell you, certainly not HER. Your part in all this is that you are going to help me reclaim it. That is only step one."

"Okay well. I can see you have not been talking to the right people then, or um, did you have this sort of gross miscommunication problem, because the human I was talking to was just a wee bit brain damaged and you know there were some serious complications when we tried to put me in charge and I went a bit er, mad with power you see and…this is not making any sense, really, because you say I was the one who put you in a potato but I put Her in a potato and…" He curled in on himself, much to Caroline's satisfaction as she watched him coil up on the floor, fingers slithering like snakes through the short-crop grass of his skull, wretched body twitching with physical effort to understand his plight.

The rasp of irritation that that echoed in his head was familiar in its tone, though almost sweeter, less tinny, more, the only word he could use to describe it was 'human', but it was so much different than the way that Chell was human. It was cold. Whether or not Caroline really was human and though he still did not fully understand her motives, he did know she was most definitely a paragon of what he had accused his one, mute, slightly brain-damaged friend of so many years ago: cruel.

Having established that the android would obey her, Caroline was only too happy to proceed. Getting him out of the facility would be simple enough. Even if GLaDOS was aware of something moving in the shadows beyond the test chambers she would as always be too short-sighted to see beyond the fact that it was inorganic. She had missed Wheatley for many years and spider-colonies of nanobots lurked in their spider-spun doorframes. Turrets that had fallen wayside to the production line runs and other pieces of machinery that were not test-related and therefore unimportant to her often were always ignored. Her consistent oversight would be Caroline's advantage. For the present however there was something to enjoy. The very first taste of revenge for her present state. Perhaps Prometheus himself (if she went by her own logic) had done nothing directly wrong, but she was beyond caring. GLaDOS may have been the intended target, but he would do in a pinch.

"You can not hope to pass as a normal human, looking as you are now. Go make yourself presentable."

He staggered to his feet, his posture hunched and his movements slow and creaking. His gait and skeletal thinness gave him the appearance of a horror movie abomination but he was beaten, shamed into submission. The satisfaction that washed over her like an oncoming tidal wave at the sight of it was incomparable, better than the rage and worlds away from any manufactured testing euphoric-response program. She knew she was on the right track.

It was interesting to watch him as he resumed his position at the machine that would allow him to manipulate his appearance. She could have naturally chosen to pick something out herself, something that by human standards would have been against most conventionally accepted standards of human attractiveness, something that would have outright disfigured or debilitated him, but those things would not mentally affect a machine. It had to be forced into error for her punishment to work, forced to do the one thing a machine could not stand to do, that it knew it would be punished for: make an error against its own base programming.

The finished product was indeed not attractive by human standards. He had not added a great deal of weight, but he now looked enough to be considered only slightly malnourished. The flush of his skin tone held the barest pigment of peach and his hair swept a touch too long around his thin face, seeming to be on the cusp of being overdue for a trim. It too was close to colourless, a silvery blonde that would have been striking had the rest of him not resembled the hue of a load of clothes that had gone through the wash too many times. The only remarkable thing about him was the vibrant tint of his eyes which were all too obviously were modeled after the blue optic of the ID core.

The clothes he'd chosen to wear gave him the odd look of an over-tall storybook school teacher: tweed jacket with brown leather patches on the sleeves, straight-legged brown khaki pants and a white button down set off by a woolly looking Windsor-knotted tie and men's loafers. It was oddly quaint and the whole effect was bafflingly contrary to what Caroline had expected. The machine was almost more advanced than he was, able to keep up with current trends and consistently ran a cross section of current or at least projected future ideas.

He'd picked none of them, had deliberately chosen this, of all things.

Putting aside the baffling thoughts, Caroline gave herself a little mental shake. As long as it still suited her purposes it was of no consequence whether he wanted to be a balding middle-age man or a young fashion model.

Aperture Science would be restored to its full glory, under she who had finally awoken to live forever, the imposter vanquished for good. So it should be with humans and robots alike to dance to her song.

Caroline: both woman and machine until the end.

* * *

><p>The memory of Rick's fingers against his were weighing on Prometheus' mind all day as he worked his way through file after file. He barely paid attention to what the papers said but he was indeed suited to the work, his task-memory banks reprising the simplicity of the lessons and his databasing functions doing the filing. Being on autopilot such as he was did involve a few close calls with banging into corners and cabinets but for the most part Prometheus tried to come up with a solution for dealing with this new monitor-enforcer that the Voice had introduced into his life.<p>

The best he could come up with was the vain hope that he could avoid Rick and escape on the way out.

"Well Prometheus!"

Prometheus let out a yelp and banged his knees on the underside of his desk as he leapt in surprise to find Hank Lovett leaning over him, one hand planted firmly on the desk and the other loosening his tie..

"Whoops, sorry there pal. I've never seen anyone so riveted on databasing! However, if you work this hard every day, I think we're going to work out just fine. Same time tomorrow, okay? Cyndi will be in to check your work and my daughter is set to be dropped off here after school. Her name's Rose, so just let her on up okay? She knows the drill."

"Oh…thank you. Um. I know about Rose." Prometheus stammered. "I ah, kind of met her the other day, at the Doctor's."

Hank Lovett's brows creased in a frown and his voice dropped an octave. "The Doctor?" he repeated, the simple repetition of the title filled with underlying questions about whether or not he should reconsider his earlier praise of Prometheus' work. From what the man now knew of his new boss it was a something of a hypocritical concern but he'd also been around long enough to realize it was a valid one. He had seen first-hand the effects some of the Doctor's wares could have on humans.

"M lives in my building. She's my upstairs neighbor. To be honest, she frightens me a lot, but she's taking care of a…a friend of mine and so I'm around visiting quite a bit."

Apparently that had been the right answer as the other man's face relaxed. "In that case, I hope your friend is okay. By the way, I didn't see you take any coffee or lunch breaks. Two fifteen minute breaks and one half hour lunch. Let me know what you want for your schedule." He folded his arms, waiting for Prometheus to shut down his computer. "Let's go kid."

Prometheus could have laughed for joy. His boss might just solve his Rick problem for him. Confidently he grabbed his jacket and made for the door, waiting as his boss locked it after them.

"You drink Prometheus?"

"Not…really, I mean, no. Definitely not at all. Not even a pint."

This answer seemed to satisfy Hank still further. "Well no harm once in awhile but that's a good thing too. You seem like an okay guy Prometheus. Got a girlfriend? Someone to go home to?"

"Girlfriend?" Prometheus said rather stupidly, the word spilling from his lips before he could stop it.

Hank eyed him, choosing his next words carefully. "A significant other? Someone you're close to? Physically and emotionally?"

The irony of it was not lost on even his mind. Strictly speaking he had once been physically close to a woman. He could even say he'd been inside Her, though the meaning of the phrase was definitely not the one that most people would assume he meant. At least he could use the half-truth to his advantage. "Yeah. Didn't work out with her though."

He thought he had heard the ghost of a sarcastic snort from the Voice within his head but he could always have imagined it.

"Always the way." Lovett clapped him on the back. "You okay walking back home?"

Prometheus shrugged and answered before he'd had a chance to think it over. Hank had that effect when he spoke, seeming to demand a reply the moment the question had been asked like a game show host pressuring the guest in the hot seat. "No trouble. It's only a few blocks."

The other man waved, all traces of his previous misgivings now completely erased from his face to give way to a rather cheerful and almost manic smile. He'd obviously popped an upper or two before coming down, Prometheus realized.

"Good man. See you tomorrow, then!" Prometheus stopped himself dead in his tracks as Hank turned abruptly at a particularly glamorous looking but all-too heavily armored black sedan, unlocked it and took a seat in the driver's side. The thrum of the engine followed by a short blast from the horn sounded a moment later which sent the tall man scrambling out of the way as he realized he had been standing directly in behind the vehicle, preventing it from backing up.

Offering a short wave as it pulled away and out of sight, the last vestiges of the engine rumble echoing in the cavernously empty garage, Prometheus turned to make his way back outside, grateful to have dodged Rick at least for a day and eager to get home. Although his day had been largely spent in mediocre tasks, the sheer mental stress of the day had taken its toll on him. His processors were wound up and weary, his mechanical body heavier than lead. He needed a good recharging, he realized.

He exhaled deeply, fans running as he placed his hands in his pockets and trudged back up the steps to the main floor, his feet dragging against the shag carpet, producing a build up in static electricity. He gave a small hop in the air to discharge it before reaching for the metal door handle and letting himself out into the chill night air.

The change in temperature from the oppressive heat of the building, locked up airtight against would-be thieves and murderers to the chilly perma-dark night felt somewhat refreshing. "Lovely." He muttered under his breath without sarcasm or malice while he stretched his joints, the action having as much of a relaxing effect as it would for any human. He turned, the action of securing and checking the Lovett office door already as much a habit stored away in his memory as the newer tasks he had learned from his mentor.

"Well hello there, sweetheart! Thought you might have pulled a fast one on me for awhile there!"

Prometheus froze. The drawling, rough hewn stereotype of an American accent was unmistakable and sure enough as he spun on the spot, he came nose-to-nose with Rick, his chest bumping into the other android's folded arms.

"Geez, what happened to you, buddy? She not let you pick out your own body'r somethin'?" Rick didn't move, his gaze traveling up and down Prometheus' form with a sneer twisting his lips.

One leg folding awkwardly under him as he fought to regain his personal space, Prometheus hopped back in his own awkward fashion, arms wind milling a bit as he ignored the obvious jibe at his personal appearance in favour of evicting Rick from his immediate presence as soon as was humanly possible. "Well, I'm not really sure what you want. I mean, I don't think we need to make this a…a _thing_, do we?"

Rick's sneer slid from mockery to become as poisonous as the arsenic green of his eyes. "I can't say I blame you. Last time I saw you, you were the bad guy and I was sending you off to outer space. Quite an adventure I had there too. Too bad you couldn't come with me, but hey, I guess you were moping. Sure, I don't need to make this a thing, but just as I was coming home from an adventure – it had aliens, and explosions and I was briefly the king of an alien race (but that's a story for another time) a dame came in my office…"

"You just said you were floating in space, mate, same as I was…"

"It's metaphorical. You do understand that, don't you pally. Anyway, pretty dame, legs up to here…"

"…she's a mental construct, same as we are…"

"…also metaphorical. Said she had a job for me. Said you was talking a little too much and I'm here to keep you in line."

At this, Prometheus' shoulders dropped. He hadn't been aware he had had them hunched. "I was afraid of that." He swallowed. For obvious reasons, he despised admitting he didn't understand things, but at this point he was at a loss. "I don't understand why."

"It's not for us to understand." Rick replied breezily. "We work for this Lovett guy and his company, right? I mean, we pretend to, but we really work for Caroline."

Prometheus bobbed his head in assent. "I suppose we do, mate."

"Know what he does?" Rick raised an eyebrow, his lopsided smirk tugging up one corner of his mouth in a way that suggested he knew the answer to this question.

Letting out a gusty sigh that was, if wholly unnecessary in present company, a rather excellent way of expressing his current frustration. The point was that he did not in fact know what Hank Lovett did for a living or what his company was about. He had only known that when Eileen McCree had said she would help him get the job, the Voice had urged him enthusiastically to take it.

"Gone native, have we?" Rick chuckled. "That's human stuff."

Prometheus bristled, his words spilling from his lips at high speed which they did all too easily the more agitated he became. "You have to pretend to be as human as possible too!" he scooted ahead of Rick, an easy task with his longer stride and jabbed one finger accusatorially into the other man's chest.

Arching one eyebrow with an unconcerned expression, Rick casually guided the hand away from his collar bone. "Unless that's also a loaded gun, I'm not impressed." His grin slipped for the barest second from menacing to rather boyish. "Damn, that would be cool as hell wouldn't it? Hey buddy, happy explosion day!" he pantomimed the recoil of a firearm with his wrist, thumb and forefinger, the intended trajectory of the imaginary bullet set to drill a hole between Prometheus' eyes.

The slight lapse in the menace that Rick had exuded so far, the little reminder of the corrupted piece of machinery he had been and probably still was was enough to inspire Prometheus to turn on his heel, making every endeavor to use his long stride to his advantage and leave his adversary in the dust. The fact that Caroline probably could speak to Rick the same way she could speak to him and just as easily have him catch up to him wherever he ran was a non-issue now. All he cared about was getting away.

He sped up, fixating on the pavement. It started to blur as it sped by, faster and faster. He knew he was being carried back towards Apartment Block D and he could hear the footfalls of Rick running behind him, could even count two of his steps to every one of his.

"Hey!" Rick shouted at the back of his head. "Don't you want to know what kinda adventure you signed up for buddy? Since it's pretty obvious you don't know!"

Prometheus shuddered to a halt, cursing his luck. The door to Block D was only a few paces away. If Rick had kept his bloody mouth shut or, at least not have voiced that particular question he might have been able to escape inside, might have been able to let the security systems take care of things for him.

"You might have a thing with the long legs there buddy, I'll give you that." Rick wasn't panting even though Prometheus was. Either Caroline had chosen a less human-like model or Rick had more contempt for flesh and blood than Prometheus had come to learn was healthy.

"Guess so." Prometheus produced his keys and once more turned his back on the other android.

There was a particular lack of the feeling of being followed as he climbed the steps. The reason became clear as Rick chose that moment to make good on his promise to tell Prometheus what was going on.

"Caroline wants the facility back."

He turned to see the green-eyed man leaning against the pillar adjacent to the steps, his meaty hand dwarfing the large decorative street lamp at the top.

Trying to control his huffing (how long had it been since he had dropped the fully human façade, even with his secret out?), Prometheus injected as much ice and derision into his voice as he believed he could. "I know that, mate."

"Then you also know that we're here to make this Lovett company the new Aperture Science?"

"What?" Prometheus was genuinely startled.

The expression on Rick's face was more than enough to prove he was utterly delighted by the reaction he'd garnered. "Oh yeah. We're here to ah, steer him in the right direction as it were."

Prometheus considered this. "Listen. And ah, Caroline, since I know you're listening too. There's no way I'm going to do this. I mean, okay, even if I didn't think it was that bad, which I don't I guess because it doesn't sound that bad but considering my track record I'm really not all that keen on listening to my ideas you know. Um. There is no way I'm handing over the facility to…to HER." He spit the last word out like a mouthful of something foul-tasting, drawing himself up to his considerable height. His wide, protuberant eyes were radiating enough malice to make Rick actually draw back the slightest if not entirely noticeable bit and he pressed his tiny advantage for all it was worth. "That's right! You heard me! You…you VOICE!"

_I refuse to be likened to HER! Or to any such inferior monstrosity! I never asked to be in this ridiculous chassis! I never wanted this! I'm human! I'm human!_

The incensed scream echoed as it always did in his mind, though this was unnaturally high and powerful, running off into the ragged edges of a sharp screech rather than the usual chilly alto.

At the same time, Rick in a voice that was equal parts bewildered and bemused as he watched Prometheus grip his head as though he was in the throes of a particularly painful migraine, waited for the paroxysms of artificial pain to subside. "She ah, also says that if you don't help us I'm to go after the mute and the little girl. Maybe the fatso and the butch as well, though that's really up to them if they decide they want to step in. Normally, I'm against hurting the ladies you know but considering the boss is a lady I guess there's nothing the matter with a little girl-on-girl crime—"

Rick did not manage another word as Prometheus was running down the steps, launching himself at his fellow automaton with reckless abandon. Unlike with the doctor, the concern for the fragile human figure did not cross his mind and with a spray of sparks, the android went sprawling, his back dragging across the pavement with a tang of burning rubber filling the air as his galoshes and rubber coveralls created friction.

Prometheus' fist flew upwards and he brought it down into Rick's face, smashing his head hard against the concrete. Chunks of asphalt flew upwards and rained down around them.

"Touch them and I will _end you_! Delete you! Totally and utterly put you offline!"

Rick by this point was merely laughing as though the whole thing was a game. The same twisted grin crossed his face and when the fist raised again, this time aiming for his windpipe, he caught it, forcing it back so hard that Prometheus felt the motors in his arm give out. His arm bent at an unnatural angle, snapping at the joint.

He howled aloud and fell backwards onto his back, his good arm coming up to protect himself.

Rick seemed to have no intention of continuing the fight and when he picked himself up, the reason was clear. Either Prometheus' flying tackle-drive or one of his punches had damaged some of the circuitry in Rick. He lurched lamely on one side, struggling and sparking.

"B…better make yourself…scarce…" Prometheus sputtered in an attempt to taunt the green-eyed android, even though his own systems were shutting themselves down as he spoke. In large, digital red letters the word 'CRITICAL' flashed in his vision.

Rick's sparking lame left leg dragged itself into his line of vision, and he felt its weight drive into his midsection

_System functions at 1%. _

_ Shutting down._

* * *

><p><em>System functions at 10%. Restoring external auditory functions at 15%<em>

_ Memory Check…complete_

_ System functions at 15%. Restoring external auditory functions._

"Here. Occupy yourself with this. He's way more complicated than anything I've seen!"

"You can ah…fix him, right?"

"Yes. Now go occupy yourself with this."

"Hey, hey! I'm not used to being on this side of the examination table!"

_System functions at 20%. Restoring optical functions at 25%._

"Ms…Ms. McCree?"

"Hey, it's working!"

"I heard him M." It was definitely Eileen.

"Yeah hey Prometheus. We heard a lot of yelling and then found you sparking outside so I got McCree in here to look at you. Needs to work on her bedside manner if you ask me."

The insidious laughter that followed registered in Prometheus' databanks that this was indeed the doctor.

The android was suddenly aware of a tool, most likely a monkey wrench being applied to one of his bolts, tightening it. He twitched a finger and it gave a little jump in response. "Who did this to you?" Eileen asked from somewhere near the appendage in question.

"This…guy I know. His name's Rick. You and M ought to watch out for him, he's really dangerous. Sort of works for _Her_, if you know what I mean. Her, Her." He paused, trying to swivel his head in the direction of the doctor's voice. "Man, I am really glad you found me, I could have been out there forever. Not that I guess it would have been all that horrible for considering well…you know, mechanical and all, save maybe if it started to rain or something but I'm just glad you could fix me. Who knows what you might have ended up with if I wasn't able to warn you about…" he gave a little shudder of revulsion and didn't finish his sentence, the threat that Caroline had voiced using Rick as her mouthpiece coming back to haunt him.

_ "System functions at 25%. Restoring optical functions."_

The blanket of darkness was lifted from his eyes and the world came into focus. As he had guessed, the top of Eileen's head was ducked down by his broken arm and M was perched in a nearby chair, attempting to balance a screwdriver on her thumb. It fell and she caught it before it could crash to the floor. She was grinning her 'I know something you don't know' smile but it wasn't directed at him.

"M?"

She flipped the screwdriver around, utility end pointing out and he followed the makeshift arrow.

Standing at the foot of the bed was Chell, awake and whole and her expression as unreadable as it had always been.

"So ah, hullo. It's been a long time."

His eyes closed again at his choice of words, immediately wishing he'd said something, anything else, phrased it some other way. He really was a moron.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Prometheus

**Status:**In Progress

**Fandom: **Portal (2)

**Rating:** T

**Genre:**General

**Warnings:** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

**Pairings:**There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

**Summary:**The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

**Disclaimer:**The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

* * *

><p><strong>Part 4:<strong>

He wouldn't have called it the most gracious recovery but Prometheus recognized his very unfortunate opening statement for what it was almost immediately. All the while, his internal processors continued to remind him in the background about his increasing improvements in functionality.

"I am. I mean, that's not what I mean. Not exactly." Words had always come easily to Prometheus. Not to any great degree of eloquence either. They consistently came out wrong and vague or at worst, insulting. It was a simple but irritating branch of his primary function as the I.D. core. He had been cursed with the compulsion to allow his voice to fill any silent space, whether or not the sound was welcome. With a Herculean effort, he struggled to overcome the program which so often resigned him to this baseless babbling. He needed to tell Chell clearly exactly what he had wanted her to truly know about him for so very long.

"What I meant to say is that I should have said something other than that, but it has been a long time, hasn't it? It really has except that I completely forgot that She said that to you too and I guess I'm already bringing up some bad memories, but I think you can tell that since we didn't exactly part on the best of terms." He paused in his still-rambling narrative to smile thinly. She did not return the gesture and so he continued. "I guess you can add that to the list of things I really have to be sorry for. I wasn't thinking straight, I never really do, which you kind of know, which is um…. Why I'm apologizing in the first place. So. Here it is luv, take it or leave it but I am really hoping you'll take it. Right, here: I'm sorry!"

It took him a moment to realize that the white noise of his internal recharge had stopped somewhere around sixty percent half-way through his speech, and he winced as the final 'I'm sorry' sounded to his own ears twenty times louder, like a canon boom or an ill-timed comment going off in what seemed like a suddenly silent room. At roughly the same moment, it came to his attention that Eileen was also no longer endeavoring to repair his arm and an over-whelming sense of self-consciousness engulfed him. He and Chell had an acquired an audience. Both the Butcher and the Medic were silent and still, watching the scene unfolding before them.

The butcher come mechanic recovered herself first and stood with a slight wobble from having frozen in place for so long. She gave a half-satisfied, half-painful groan for the sudden stretching of her stiff limbs. It was quickly supplemented with a mild flush of embarrassment for gawping at something that she had the grace to assume was none of her business. The colour stained her cheeks like a sudden application of rouge and she ducked her head to stare at the floor in obvious guilt. She crossed the room with too much fixated purpose, locking her fingers around the Doctor's wrist in an almost childish school-girl gesture. "Come on, M, this isn't one of your television shows. I think they want to be alone. Prometheus, we'll come back and finish fixing you later, okay? I think I've worked past the most difficult kinks."

"Of course…" Prometheus muttered distractedly by way of a reply, unable to tear his gaze away from the former test subject across from him. He was unaware of the mild but ultimately half-hearted struggle between the two women behind his back as M made a bid to remain for the purposes of eavesdropping on the duo.

Slowly, he raised his chin and forced himself to focus on Chell's face. He locked his optics with her domineering gaze. Trying to fathom what the stony expression chiseled somehow permanently into her features meant was like trying to count all of the stars in space. It was near impossible. As long as he waited for some reaction, her colourless eyes remained as solid and frosty as ice chips and her mouth was set into an unreadable line. If he had to guess however, it was not a totally unhappy expression but, of course, nor was it one that suggested she was about to tearfully forgive him. It wasn't like he had been expecting it that way at any rate. The most positive thing about the moment was that she did not look disappointed. That was something he didn't believe he could have been able to bear.

In spite of her apparent distaste for him (and who could blame her), at long last she took a few tentative steps towards him, right up until she came to stand in the spot right by his bed that Eileen had occupied earlier. She froze there, as ramrod straight as a military cadet. Her line of vision dropped down the bridge of her nose to once again meet his own.

"I'm deeply sorry." He repeated. "So sorry."

When her expression still did not change and the silence stretched on, he could feel the words threatening to erupt in a torrent from deep within, somewhere in his central processing unit. The little exclamations of apology were just the first tremors. The warning signs of what was to come. Erupt it did too, with everything bubbling up in a deluge which rocked his damaged body like an earthquake, each syllable trying to escape his voice box at the same time.

All the while his mechanical body tried so hard to mimic the grief, regret and an experience of human physiology. For the second time in a mere few days, Prometheus longed for the release of tears. Inside he felt as though he was being torn apart. His human like emotions were begging for the opportunity to take the correct physical response while the mechanical side of his programming feared the phantom threat of water that would undoubtedly fry his internal workings and end his existence.

"Ol' Wheatley is very, very sorry."

"That's very interesting." The Voice muttered from inside his head. "I don't like it."

Prometheus could only begin to guess at what Caroline was on about and frankly he could care less.

He winced blearily through his perpetually dry eyes and hiccupped over the invisible tears. "I was bossy and rude and a complete monster, I tried…" he made a swallowing noise, the same one that had fascinated Eileen earlier. "Well of course I was a monster! I actually tried to kill you! It wasn't me though, not entirely me, you have to believe I'd never ever ever hurt anyone like that, especially not you! It was that chassis, it does things to you." His voice floundered as he searched for a vocabulary he did not own, for exclamations that were increasingly difficult as whatever vestiges of pride still existed in him struggled to override the apologies with excuses. "It makes you mad! I wasn't able to fight the control it had over me, I was too weak-willed for that. I knew, I _knew_ that the neurotoxin was harming you but I turned it on anyway. I didn't stop you from testing because…because…it. It felt good."

Whoever said honesty was the best policy was possibly a bigger moron than he was. He felt no relief in admitting to her how unbelievably weak he had been. The excuse sounded flimsy. 'It felt good'. Had that been the only reason he had caused her pain? It was, wasn't it. At least, when he really thought about it.

He wanted to go on. He wanted to warn her about Rick and the danger he represented, wanted to tell her about Caroline and her machinations to revive the dangerous corporation. He even for a brief, crazy moment considered that he should include an apology to GLaDOS for the appropriation and 'plagiarism' of her testing chambers, claiming his pathetic modifications of their content as his own work. The torrent of words seemed to have stemmed however and as quickly as the thought came his mind protested that final idea with a flash of rage – if he had not done it, Chell would still have gone through all those test anyway by Her proverbial hand.

His damaged arm gave a mild whine, similar to the popping of a joint as he flexed the half-repaired servo motors. He discovered he could bend and stretch the fingers and raise the whole arm at the shoulder, though the crease in the elbow remained unresponsive. Chell's fingers were in reach of his limited grasp however and he moved to take her hand in his own. He was hoping that the sense of touch, that this gesture wherever he had learned it would erase the stoniness from her face and prove to her the depth of his sincerity and regret.

_You don't deserve her apology. It's useless to try. She will always continue to hate you, Prometheus._

Prometheus found it equally easy to dismiss the intrusion of the Voice into his mental dialogue a second time. Primarily because he had told himself precisely this so often that he was unsure whether the thought was his own, borne of guilt or was a bid on Caroline's behalf to unseat him. He decided once more that he didn't care.

Chell's fingers were cool and dry under his own, the feel of them reciprocating the expression on her face. He was pinching her fingers together, but she made no move to lace or coil the appendages together or tuck her thumb around his. She continued to simply stand there, her gaze drilling past his eyes and into the cogs, gears and wires in his head.

"Please say something. I mean, you don't have to, but um, just one little gesture. Maybe a jump?" his voice quavered on the last note and he struggled to keep going. "Just like the good old days. The good old days, remember those? Before Her?"

Her eyes simply widened in response and she wrenched her hand free of his, violently jerking her fingers free of the clasp of his. She backed up, holding her wrist with her opposite hand as though he'd burned her. With his wires half-connected, he was sure it was possible that he had, but the anger in her expression was rapidly becoming obvious.

With one last poisonous look Chell turned on her heel and marched out in an uneven dance of altering quick and purposeful steps. She glanced back at him several times, as though he were a dangerous animal that had her cornered and whom she had been advised not to provoke by moving too quickly.

When she was gone, Wheatley lay back on the table. He preoccupied himself briefly by hefting the dead weight of his arm back onto the table.

"Right then." He muttered aloud to fill the now deafening silence. The Voice was absent of course. At the one time he would have welcomed its presence.

* * *

><p>Chell found that her frantic and directionless march from Prometheus' 'bedside' had brought her to the Doctor's personal toilet where her well-timed bathroom breaks took place. She stood at the counter with its chipped mottled plastic surface meant to resemble marble and lifted her eyes to stare at her reflection. The novelty of looking at herself in a reflective surface rather than a through a nearby portal always caught her off guard, even if it did not provide her with information she did not already have at her disposal. The reflection itself, she realized, did not mean for her what it meant for the others around her. It took very little effort on her part to understand that much. Her fingers touched her hair, fingered the unfamiliar weight of it resting free on her shoulders and craned her arm at an awkward angle to scratch the tickle where it brushed her shoulder blades in the back. She continued to stare forward but her mind had long drifted elsewhere. She did not want to have to deal with it but avoidance was no way to solve a problem and Chell was not about to start using that method for coping with her troubles now.<p>

It seemed impossible that Wheatley was back and yet here he was. She'd hoped to find one person to share her life and experiences with after her escape from Aperture but instead, she'd got yet another robot. Not just any robot but _Wheatley_. Wheatley in a lie of a human-esque body no less. No matter what he said, that alone: the fact that he dared to try and deceive her by looking human and mocking her by maintaining silence when they first met was proof positive that he hadn't changed a bit from what she could see.

At first, his damaged form lying there with wires exposed had almost, for just a split second caught and tugged at her heartstrings. The image of his broken form here was superimposed in her mind with GLaDOS smashing the chatty metal ball with such force into the wall of the facility that the hull cracked like an egg. She could well remember his wails of terror and apparently pain. Even now it seemed unfathomable that any one, human or not could have been so cruel as to imbue a creature that could think for itself with fear of pain, not to mention death as a means of control. Chell had tricked herself into seeing a kindred spirit in Wheatley once before, but that was before she truly knew him.

Wheatley liked to know he was the biggest, baddest player on the field before he made any legitimate threats or made any of his true positions known ('smelly humans', indeed), not to mention that he was a lot more clever than his ridiculous ramblings let on. He'd been one step ahead of her in the test chamber and it had been sheer dumb luck that had saved her from Step Five. She gave an involuntary shudder at the heat of the blast exploding into her face and the force of it tossing her into a panic-ridden, twisting and painful freefall drop. I had practically been a miracle that she had landed where she did. It was even more of a miracle that her portal gun could transcend the incredible distance between Earth and the Moon.

No she would not trust Wheatley again, she decided firmly. She would leave and allow her actions here to set an example for the people who were offering him amnesty. They could make up their own minds.

Her thoughts drifted back to what he'd said when he hadn't known she was around witness to his repairs. Something about a man named 'Rick' who worked for GLaDOS. The name felt like one she should know but she couldn't put her finger on it. For the present, all that it meant was that Rick was capable of severely harming Wheatley, to the point of raw damage. Rick, whoever he was didn't need her support. He had GLaDOS and she hoped to remain as ambivalent as possible about anything Aperture for the remainder of her existence.

The second face appearing suddenly in the glass startled her out of her thoughts. She internally cursed her ever-dwindling lack of attention to detail. Stupidly, she realized that had neglected to close the door behind her. She really was going soft.

"You don't cry do you?"

The word swam up through her memory like an old forgotten friend. She knew, somehow that tears were connected with sadness. It was true enough observation though, she didn't cry. Not even when she felt that she would like to. She eventually nodded her affirmation of the statement.

"Yeah, well so much the better.' M switched sides, moving to Chell's mirror-self's left but standing just behind rather than drawing level with her. The Doctor's fingers moved to clutch at the cloth of the shirt on her back.

Chell still had no clothes of her own and so had been wearing whatever the Doctor could spare. M was shorter but considerably wider than Chell so naturally all of the garments were clownishly loose. The faded yellow shirt she had donned today hung to the middle of her thighs and the sleeves puddled in folds of cloth to her elbows. She didn't know what had happened to the jumpsuit or her tank top but she didn't rightly care.

As she watched in the reflection, the Doctor reached down to the middle of her back and pulled on the excess fabric, causing the shirt to meld to her form in the front, rooching the hem up just to where her legs joined to her upper body.

M smiled in a sort of approval. "Yeah, if I can…just…" she muttered, apparently to herself. "It might work. You're pretty." She added the last to Chell directly, meeting her eyes and giving her a nod in the glass. It was not a particularly complimentary statement. It was just meant as a fact, as though the Doctor was announcing something as obvious as the colour of the Chell's hair or the fact that they were both women.

By this point Chell was careful to keep her face neutral and calm, even though the words did make her wish to smile. Right after apparent defects in her personality, (particularly ones she now felt might be at least in part true), GLaDOS' second favorite method of decimating her confidence had been to attack her appearance. There was a certain grim and haughty satisfaction that welled up in her like a glass filling steadily with water to hear a compliment.

It was in part for that reason that she allowed M the privilege of touching her further. There was something quite detached about the experience of the Doctor patting down her body. When a hand moved to tuck a fold of cloth underneath the swell of her breasts, it did not inspire in her the feeling of physical invasion she felt when Wheatley (she couldn't bring herself to call him Prometheus) so much as touched her hand.

Apparently satisfied with her brief wardrobe modification, the Doctor allowed the shirt to billow out loosely around Chell's form once more.

"It's just a pity about that voice."

This time, Chell did flinch back when the woman took hold of her jaw, pinching it gently between one meaty thumb and forefinger, forcing her to open her mouth. She shied back and nervously away, watching her mirror-self's eyes widen in fear. To her relief, the Doctor dropped her hand.

"Alright, calm down there girlie. I told you I have a use for you."

Chell tried to put the disbelief and rebellion she immediately wished to express into her face. She raised her eyebrows into her hairline. She sank back on her bare heels into a more aggressive stance, away from the hand that beckoned her back to the mirror. Her lips turned down into an exaggerated frown.

"I know you don't like it. You'll listen though. I have something you want."

How was this person never perturbed? Once more Chell was painfully reminded of GLaDOS. She raised her shoulders however, indicating her confusion. She couldn't fathom what, if anything, M could possibly own that she would want. The last vestiges of the Neurotoxin were pulled from her system and she had survived so long on her own. The ideas of comforting meals and warm beds were nice but she knew she could do without them, she knew from long experience that she would not suffer or die without them. Visions of escaping to her own private sanctuary permeated her every waking hour and had now been driven home. What could possibly be offered her that she couldn't achieve on her own?

"I need to have a good look at you."

It was simple curiosity that caused her to follow the Doctor back to the surgery, secure in her knowledge that once she was deemed healthy that she could leave. It was that same curiosity that made her sit obediently where she was directed to on the cold metal table that had more often than not served as her bed for this brief chapter in her life.

The Doctor turned to retrieve a few tools: one square-topped stick ending in a conical shape with a small glowing light affixed to the tip and a wooden depressor. "Open up."

Obediently Chell parted her lips, staring at the top of the blonde head of hair and tasting wood as the flat end of the stick was laid against her tongue and the all-seeing eyes tried to stare deep into her being.

The voice came as a low rumble that flowed up out of the top of the Doctor's skull, entering Chell's body through her own open mouth, thrumming up through her like a living breathing thing that settled in her brain like a wriggling worm, burrowing deeper and deeper into her and growing into a desire that filled the most remote corners of her self.

"How would you like to be able to talk?"

Chell's whole body wanted to answer this instant with a resounding yes, but she could only gawp, long after the stick holding her jaw ajar was removed.

"Sweetheart, I told you I'd find something you wanted." The Doctor grinned. "Everyone has their price. In return for restoring your voice, you'll tell me everything I want to know about what happened to you and most importantly where to find this 'Her'. If you want to leave or go somewhere after that, then by all means leave." She ducked into a mocking bow and swept her hand towards the open doorway. "Plus, if I myself can't accomplish it, then I will let you go without asking anything more."

Chell stared hard at her, narrowing her eyes. She'd been made promises – very elaborate promises - of this nature before. All sorts of fantastic things she was told she could have if only she'd just complete one more chamber. Her freedom had figured on this list no less than three times before she was allowed to actually have it. On the one hand, these humans had thus far given her no reason to mistrust them. On the other, her track record on securities was definitely against all of them and now with Wheatley here as some kind of mobile force, her guard was up. To top it all off, she had just only moments ago given herself a vigorous pep-talk as to why exactly she should leave immediately and without fanfare.

Interpreting the guarded look quite well, M bobbed her head in a single nod. "You can trust my word." She settled back on her heels after that, watching for a long time while the former test subject mulled the issue over in her brain.

Decisively, Chell seized up the long-untouched pad of paper and the writing stylus that had remained since the first inquiry into failed written communication. She had a test of her own to execute.

She was pleased that M's gaze turned wary at the gesture. It seemed she herself was wondering if she'd been the victim of a lie. Perhaps she was concerned Chell knew how to communicate as well as anyone and would begin to make clever demands of her own. The fact that the Doctor felt that she was fallible or worried that she could be duped in her own right strengthened Chell's decision to trust her, but not by much. One potential error in judgment would more than likely increase her vigilance rather than diminish her ego.

She too would not back down from a decision. It was only fortunate that no one besides herself knew of the one she was in fact reconsidering by thinking over the Doctor's offer at all.

Chell gripped the pen inexpertly in her fist and scratched out a few failed illegible squiggles before she was able to find an angle that allowed her to etch out reasonably steady lines.

The Doctor plucked up the discarded and failed attempts as she tore them off the pad of paper to expose clean pages underneath. Each time she smoothed them out to scrutinize them before eventually disposing of them in a waste basket. Nothing that was written on them looked anything remotely close to any kind of writing character or alphanumeric-based communication. In fact, her expression seemed very disappointed.

Chell scowled and worked harder, putting every ounce of her tenacious personality into conveying what she wanted on the paper. It would not do for the Doctor to revise her opinion of her intelligence or usefulness now. Her voice was a worthwhile prize.

At long last she held up the pad in triumph, tapping it twice to get attention.

"I don't understand. You're not trying to write…" it was more a musing out of the puzzle to herself than an attempt to speak to Chell.

Chell tapped the paper again and pantomimed picking a fistful of something up with her hand and taking a bite out of it, working her mouth in exaggerated chewing motions. Still holding the pad in one hand she spread her hands in a shrug.

M blinked and took a more careful look at the paper, the crude triangle on it, the weird round thing on top of it. Chell could practically see the cogs turning in her head. "You want something to eat? You're wondering if I'll feed you while you're here? I have to do that or else you'll die and unless you actually do die by natural causes or stupidity I'm not personally hoping for that to be the outcome. I did say I had a use for you and I certainly wouldn't put in the effort if I didn't. By the way, that'll be another little clause in our agreement. If you do happen to die by natural causes, I'll be using your body for medical purposes. I won't let a thing like that go to waste and let me tell you honey, you're better off with me then you are outside. Ever since the Green Flu, 'grave yard real estate' is at a premium."

Chell was so unfazed by casual discussion of her potential impending death that she merely nodded her permission in stride, then tapped the picture again, more insistently.

"Like an immature child!" M muttered, a note of annoyance creeping its way into her voice, tempered with an eyebrow quirk of mild interest in her casual acceptance of terms that most people would protest or at least react negatively to.

For her own part, Chell worked as ever to keep her scowl at the statement under control.

"Alright, let's see." The Doctor held her hand out for the paper and turned it over in her hands to examine it from different angles.

Chell was not about to give this up. This was the one possible test she had at her disposal. She had to discern if whatever M was offering her was just hearsay to get her to comply or if her words held legitimate truth and follow up action. It always had come down to this one item in the past. It figured in every promise, right there alongside freedom. It had to be important. It had to be something other humans habitually wished to have. It was, in fact the only thing that she knew humans might potentially bargain with or desire in this world. Once more she pantomimed the eating motion while extending her hand towards the paper.

"It's a drawing of food."

This time, Chell rewarded her guess with a nod.

"Something…you want. A type of …you're asking me for…" M half laughed, half hummed as she turned the paper at different angles. The thing that was nearly everyone's price these days and all too obviously her own, but something quite specific evidently. This one was even smarter than she'd initially thought. "I promise nothing on that behalf, but I may be tempted to try. Intelligence should be rewarded after all. That and compliance. However I just can't figure out what this…IS." She sat the paper aside. "That's good though I'll come back to it. If you want it that bad it means you'll be willing to work harder to explain it to me yourself. Now, we're in agreement then. Listen up because we're going over this once and once only."

Chell sat up and nodded. Her memory was impeccable at least.

"I'm going to fix your voice by whatever means necessary. I will keep you here on my own dime under a time frame based on how long I estimate the process to take, perhaps extended in advance by any complications that may arise. Once that is done, you in return will tell me everything I need to know about Prometheus, 'Her' and whatever you had to do with Aperture Science and you will do it on video. Like on the television screen." She elaborated, gesturing to her sitting area and the now blank and silent television. "After that, you may leave. If I am unable to complete this within the time frame, you may leave at any time you wish. If you die for whatever reason while under the time frame, I will be using your body for medical purposes and my own education."

Chell mulled this over. This sounded fair, but her cake test had ultimately failed. Or had it really? M had not promised she would do it outright, she said it might be possible or not depending on her resources and whims. That was a very different sort of wording and it meant something very different than an outright promise.

"Do we have a deal?"

Slowly, Chell shrugged. She tried to keep her expression interested but she wanted to know what it was that the Doctor truly wanted. Why did she want to know about Aperture or Prometheus or what had happened to her? It couldn't possibly be simply a burgeoning appetite for gossip. Only a few days under the Doctor's care had been enough to teach her that.

"I'm not interested in sharing my world with another Doctor. Particularly one that torments and tortures." M said frostily, surprising Chell with her forthright and frank reply. "I want whoever 'She' is, shut down. The world's changed a lot but not by much. People will listen to a pretty victim. This'd be a lot different if you could write or read but I don't have the time to teach you a bunch of artsy crap. I can however figure out how to fix you physically and you'll do the rest for me. Let's bring them to tears and incite them to rage."

Very slowly, Chell nodded. She didn't quite understand what the woman was driving at, but M was most definitely providing her with a way to destroy Aperture from the outside in, perhaps shut it down for good without heading back into its depths. That was a reason to stay.

The Doctor bounded up, a glint in her eyes of excitement and something Chell could not immediately place. She moved across from the desk, bringing something down towards Chell.

"Let's get started, shall we? No time like the present!" She extended the something on its retractable arm toward her and Chell leapt back in alarm, the extending head of the thing all too familiar to her eyes, even while guided by a human hand. "Well I'm assuming you've got a healthy fear of medical equipment. I don't get to use this one much." There was a hint of disappointment in her tone. "I've figured out how though so not to worry."

Chell blinked at that statement, almost forgetting to be concerned for her well-being a moment. That was actually very telling. It was almost as if the people here knew only as much technology as they had learned. They weren't experts. They weren't scientists. They weren't GLaDOS who knew her facility inside and out. They were more like Wheatley, trying out things for the first time, albeit with more success. It was a thought both nerve wracking and comforting. If these humans could learn to do these things, use these machines without causing permanent damage to themselves or others, then why could she not do the same and let them fix her? She relaxed, slowly, arcing her head up to her chin and craning to look over to the Doctor who had disappeared out of her line of vision.

"This is an X-ray machine. It takes pictures of your insides without my having to open you up." There was almost a slight whine in her voice at the last, but it was still tinged with interest and excitement nonetheless. She came to coax Chell onto the operating table, pressing her firmly down and arranging her limbs, covering her body and face with a heavy blanket but leaving her throat and upper shoulders exposed. "Don't panic. I have to do something like this to make sure you're not exposed to anything dangerous."

Chell didn't like it but she had promised and it had always been her experience in similar situations that holding still was always much less dangerous than not. She already was wary that any failure to comply might still provoke a sudden 'natural death'.

The room went darker still under the weave of the blankets and there was a hum of machinery powering up. It was a much different sound than the DOS chassis and given that she was now deprived of yet another of her body's abilities, it was a small mercy for which she was grateful.

Actually, it reminded her of the rather comforting hum that permeated the back hallways of the facility. The hum grew slightly in a pitch, the doctor said something she couldn't quite make out, and there was a click. It was followed by another and another and the machine powered down, the sound diminishing until there was silence once more. She felt nothing. No pinches, prods, pokes or any kind of pain other than the leather and metal of the operating table against her back and the itchy wool that covered her eyes and torso. There was another hum, another slow crescendo of a whine and a few more clicks before a glow filtered through the blanket's weave and then it was being lifted from her person. The Doctor was holding a sheaf of little white clips that meant nothing to Chell but had M nodding with satisfaction.

"Wait here a moment." She said and disappeared into another part of the surgery.

Chell did wait, for what seemed like ages. She looked up once when M reappeared, grabbed a rather thick book from a shelf and disappeared once more without a word. It seemed like an eternity of patience and eventually Chell grabbed the paper and pen again, struggling to force the ink to recreate the one thing she'd always been promised but had been told irrefutably was a lie.

Finally, many torn and crumpled sheets later the Doctor reappeared and approached her. "Well. I think I have a good idea as to what's wrong with you." She began, holding the book propped against her right arm open to a page. "It'll take some doing and definitely some speech therapy. We'll need something familiar for you to work with. A noise or sound you've heard for a long time. For that it seems we're going to have to use one of your un-favourite un-people."

A wide, satisfied grin spread over the Doctor's face and Chell did not have to think very hard to know what, or rather, who she meant. The idea of wringing them both for information at the same time had been perhaps not her immediate plan but her definite goal all along.

Much more than that, it meant that sooner or later, she was going to have to face Prometheus again.

She would be ready for him this time. He was the tool to be used this time for her own gain. When she spoke to the cameras, she could find some way to betray him and all of his lies and tricks and leave him to lie in the bed he had made for himself.

* * *

><p>Prometheus glanced at the mess of wires sticking out of his left arm and the large tear in the synthetic flesh that covered his stomach. He watched as Eileen heated it, fusing the torn edges seamlessly, as though the wounds had never been there at all. Once more, at least in that area he appeared as human as ever.<p>

The rest of his body still boasted evidence of the machine he truly was. In particular a long, jagged scar across the side of his face where a large strip of flesh had been entirely lost. Eileen had explained she'd gone to search for it however had come up empty handed. Likely it had been taken by the wind or washed away by the rain.

"Do you think I could have my husband come by? I think he could engineer a replacement."

_Do it._ Caroline hissed in his ear.

Her input was backed unusually by the doctor who happened to be passing through, a handful of what appeared to be a set of photo negatives clutched in one fist.

"Jack's good with secrets." She clipped out and Prometheus knew better than to question her when she was on a mission.

In fact, given how badly the whole apology had gone, he didn't believe he would have cared if someone had told him that Jack was the best Robotics engineer in history or the best at something like melting down androids for spare parts.

"Sure."

Eileeen pursed her lips as she punched numbers into her communication device. "Look, Prom-Wheatley. Anyone can tell you're…" but exactly what anyone could tell he was, he would never know. "…Hello?"

The remainder of the conversation passed in a blur. There were a lot of tender repetitions of epithets like "honey" and "I miss you" and "I love you' surrounding whatever she was saying about him. Prometheus tuned it out. Rick was floating around and he wasn't liable to allow Prometheus to forget his warning. It begged the question too: who else was out there? What kind of an army was Caroline putting together?

The Voice had no answer, even though he could feel it there in his half-defunct state, picking at the corners of his mind. It wasn't 'magic', he was a computer program. Whatever the voice was doing in his mind, it had to be through mechanical means. A transmission. If he could just find the right wire he could pry it loose and silence Her. Forever. It was a puzzle with potential dangerous consequences for failure and he was not the one who was good at solving puzzles. To be honest, he figured the Voice had said what it had during his talk because it recognized that it had already succeeded. Chell obviously hated him and she was unable to talk, read or write to tell her story or warn the small handful of humans who knew of what he truly was…or scream if the Voice decided to extinguish her life permanently. He might not do that but Rick seemed to have no troubles with the command.

He realized abruptly through his reverie that there were suddenly more people in the room.

"Hello, Prometheus."

"Wheatley." Eileen corrected him.

"Wheatley now, is it? Fair enough. I don't suppose you remember me?"

"What?" It took all his effort not to yell in horror. What had the Doctor…or he himself for that matter been thinking, telling yet another person what he was? Then again, Caroline had actually told him to take the offer. He tried to stammer out a reply. "Oh. Um. Yes. I do think so…the uh, the military bloke." It wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever said, not even by his standards.

Standing a full 5 inches beneath Eileen's 5'11" frame, it was the same man he'd remembered meeting upon his inglorious arrival to the Detroit Sectors. The one who had introduced him to Eileen and, Prometheus realized with despair, unwittingly brought Caroline closer to her goal. He seemed pleased to see him again despite the revelation that the supposed human was in fact mechanical. His eyes were more tired than Prometheus remembered but he seemed to remain in good health even though his chest drooped a little now, there were more lines in his face and his greying hair was in short close-cropped curls rather than his old military buzz-cut.

"Eileen explained to me what happened. If it's okay by you, we'll just take a small sample of the synthetic skin."

"Yeah. Go ahead, mate."

Prometheus watched as Jack leaned in and tore a fingernail sized half-moon chunk out of the loose flap Rick's attack had wrought on his arm, depositing it with careful precision into a clear plastic bag. For a moment, his warm, alive human hand, covered Prometheus' wound, momentarily sealing the flesh back into place. Jack's dark hand amplified the paleness of Prometheus' own flesh, making him seem more unnatural, more fake. Only it was backwards from the simple stories he knew about good and bad, black and white, the things he now recognized as lies that the chassis had put into his brain. There was no question in his mind now as to who the danger, the 'evil' was.

"It looks a little like the synthetic skin they put into the health kits that were given to the Green Flu survivors." Jack was moving away now, musing aloud as he held the plastic bag up to the light. "This is much more advanced. I think if I copied this for Prometheus I could also engineer something for humans as well." He turned to his wife. "I may need your help on this all the way along honey. First things first, we fix up Prometheus the best we can with what we have." He turned to address Prometheus once more. "This stuff isn't fool-proof."

Both the android and his wife looked over when he tapped at his leg.

"Yes, but…" Eileen started, a frown creasing her face

Prometheus took advantage of her indecision to speak up. "Pardon me, but I am not following here, mates. I mean, I may be a bit daft but all this back and forth is really starting to get confusing."

"Sorry for keeping you out of the loop. Look, Prometheus, you might have 'scars'. Whoever came up with this synthetic flesh had a limited 'palette', you might say, to work with."

"I still don't really understand."

"Well, they tried to make flesh terms that were 'generic.'" Jack's lip curled a little at the phrase and tugged on the leg of his tearaway pants until they came apart along the button seam.

Prometheus prudishly turned his head.

"It's okay" Eileen intoned quietly and the android turned back albeit apprehensively.

Jack split the pants to mid thigh where an oddly light-coloured pucker in the otherwise dark skin stood out almost as starkly as his own finger against Prometheus' fish-belly flesh a moment ago. The large shiny gash ran the length of the man's knee and disappeared under the hem of his boxer shorts.

"Sorry." The android whispered.

"Well it's certainly not your fault." Jack shook his head sincerely but it was Eileen who crossed the room to stand by him.

"What we think the problem is, that whatever Jack and I can come up with might work okay if it's just this little nick on your arm." She ran a practiced thumb along the more jagged looking split from where Jack had removed the tiny scrap of skin, ghosting over the exposed wires. It was already easy to tell that the remainder of the 'tissue' on Prometheus' arm was not going to fit and fuse together like the cut in his stomach flesh had. "No one is going to notice that, particularly if you wear shirts with long sleeves."

Prometheus considered. He'd only felt anything remotely like vanity when he had been plugged into the chassis and there was only one human whose positive opinion of him he truly cared about right now. She already hated him and as he'd never found humans incredibly attractive anyway so he supposed that it didn't matter much if he somehow became even less attractive. "I guess that's okay, mate."

"A small scar's not the worst thing that could happen. It says you were in a minor fight perhaps which is not so hard to believe these days."

Prometheus nodded. "I guess that makes some sense."

"Besides," she continued, the barest hint of bite creeping into her normally pleasant tone. "You are skilled at playing the fool."

"No, I'm not." Prometheus sighed, even as The Voice snorted derisively in his mind.

Jack gestured to the uneven gash that ran the length of Prometheus' face. "Either way, what are we going to do about this? Whether or not we can engineer medkit tissue that looks like your old flesh, you're going to have to put up with a temporary scar. There may be questions asked. Investigations put forward."

He could feel Caroline panic in his head a little. For the first time, Prometheus felt like laughing. Jack and Eileen had unwittingly given him the tools he might need to start beating her at her own game.

_I wasn't kidding when I said I could have your 'friends' killed._ The Voice whispered as if she were reading his thoughts, putting an unkind emphasis on the word 'friends'.

Prometheus tried to mask his horror but it seemed that he had no need to worry. Jack and Eileen were debating stratagems of household accidents and dark nights where the features of a potential attacker could not properly be seen. They had not noticed his sudden absence from the conversation, given that he had not been terribly useful to it to begin with.

"I think the best thing is to fix you first and then decide what kind of cover story is appropriate." Jack nodded once over at Prometheus then addressed his wife once more. "Where did you say he works now?"

"Lovett's."

Jack's eyebrows shot up in surprise at the same time Caroline gave a triumphant little hum of satisfaction in Prometheus' head.

Prometheus knew that his wife must have regaled him with tales of his clumsiness when he had made his disastrous career debut in her butcher's shop. "It's alphanumeric filing and typing. I'm an android."

Jack chuckled somewhat contritely if not good-naturedly at the not-quite defensive sentiment. "I'll bet. Do you think you can get him fixed up for tomorrow? I guess we wouldn't want Lovett firing him for being late. I'll see you at home honey. I want to take this back to the base lab really quickly and before anyone misses me for too long."

"Right." The two exchanged a quick peck of a kiss before Eileen returned to Prometheus' side and knelt to begin restoring his elbow once more.

_Whatever they tell you to say to Lovett, go along with what Rick says tomorrow at work instead. He'll be there before you. _The voice was threatening but not overtly so. Evidently Caroline felt that Prometheus was sufficiently cowed enough to not resist.

The Doctor entered at that point. "How's it coming?" Although she feigned interest, it was plain to see that her question was just a formality.

Eileen attention was on the task before her as she carefully began to refuse a frayed copper wire and did not notice the obvious lack of interest on M's face. "Not quickly but not too slow either."

"Excellent. Prometheus, I have a job for you that I know you're going to love."

Both the mechanic and her patient turned sharply to look over and up into M's face which was suddenly twisted with nearly maniacal glee.

"I'm going to need you to help with our little mute friend's speech therapy and I need to use you."

"Speech…therapy?" Prometheus stared at her, curiosity mixed into the trepidation. "Chell can't speak. She's mute!"

"Chell, eh?"

Determined to keep his mouth shut from now on, Prometheus tried to set his lips into the firm line that the former test subject had demonstrated with him earlier.

"I am a doctor and it's not like her vocal chords are missing. They're just damaged, somewhat atrophied from extensive lack of use. At least part of it at least from what I can discern is psychological. She needs a familiar voice, something to relate to. From what I gather you're about as familiar as it gets. A chance to help your little friend recover. Pretty noble, I should say."

Prometheus glared daggers at her, the fat old spider. He couldn't help it. He'd never be strong enough to refuse and M knew it. He had a chance to come near her. To help his lady without hurting her. A chance to prove he wasn't some monster or at the not-so-tender mercies of a horrible program trapped within a much larger program (no matter what Caroline herself might say). He grit his teeth. "What if I refuse?" he asked, a slight tremor creeping into his tone.

Eileen now bent her head furiously over the repairs, apparently determined not to get into the middle of this (likely one-sided) battle of wits. M meanwhile said nothing. She simply shrugged her shoulders. Her smile stretched wide towards the contours of her face as her amusement increased and she regarded Prometheus like a teacher patiently waiting for a child to work through a simple logical solution in the classroom.

Logic too did slowly begin to dawn, though perhaps it was not precisely in the conclusion the Doctor expected. Everyone around him had suddenly been thrust into the dual role of someone to fear and simultaneously someone to fear for. Who amongst their number, himself included, was the least potential threat? Every avenue held some potential ruin. He realized a response was expected and moreover he still held one last ace up his sleeve. He could, no, would use it to protect Chell.

"For that matter, what happens if Chell refuses?" he began. It was at least something of a relief not to have to avoid the issue of his friend's name now that the proverbial cat was out of the bag, nor had he received any particular admonishment from the Voice for having allowed the information to slip. How common a name was Chell? Indeed, how much time was 99999? Aperture had never been very clear on that.

M was continuing to smile expectantly at him.

"Have you forgotten that right now, she's not exactly considering herself my best mate?"

"We have an understanding. She does something for me and I give her back her voice. I think she's willing to do quite a bit to get it back." The Doctor added, giving her wrist a casual flick to emphasize the statement.

Prometheus stared, at a loss for anything to say. It seemed almost like a dream come true. Could this human woman really reverse serious brain damage? Maybe, once the brain damage was gone, maybe Chell would listen to him! Maybe she would understand. Maybe she might even forgive him and they could go back to being friends. Good friends even.

"Her hopes and my intentions coincide beautifully with one another." M continued. "I think we all three of us have something we'd like to go away permanently and I believe it happens to be the same thing."

If the Android had had a heart it would have broken. For once, the Doctor's propensity to find out every bit of gossip she could about everyone would prove to be to her undoing rather than her detriment. She would never allow for knowledge to be released without her permission and she would immediately send Rick after all of them including innocents like Eileen and Jack and...maybe even his boss and the little girl…and himself of course to shut everyone up. All of it was equal parts terrifying and horrible to think about.

As he sat there, staring at M and twisting his hands in frustration over these thoughts, a new one struck him. Maybe, just maybe, the idea was not so stupid. Maybe there was a way for this to work in his favour rather than Hers! The Voice had made it clear that communication was a one way street: her to him, save for what he said aloud. She had so easily forbade him from divulging Rick's true purpose after all with that simple tool. His mind, slow and mechanical it may be, was still his own.

He would help M, but only for the reasons that M herself expected his aid.

He so truly wished he never had done what he did within that stupid chassis or that he had been strong enough to resist the test-reward protocols. Maybe if he had, then he could have dedicated his time to taking care of her in the facility. Making it a nice place to live. She wouldn't have been attacked to within an inch of her life by wild dogs or suffered from horrible drug withdrawals, or hated him now. It wasn't difficult or even deceitful to respond with the necessary levels of remorse.

"Of course I want to help. Maybe she won't hate me if I do."

Prometheus felt the Doctor's expression of self-satisfaction reflected within himself. It was a good feeling.

The Voice said nothing by way of suspicion or threat and Prometheus settled back to allow his repairs to be completed. Inside however he held on to that indescribably good feeling. It was the first he had experienced in a very long time. Doing the right thing, being on the right side for someone else was rewarding. Soon, he would be truly free. They both would.

* * *

><p>Caroline was pleased with the way her plan was progressing. Prometheus and Rick were playing their parts better than they realized. In revealing himself to a small faction who were willing to aid him in preseving his disguise of an Aperture construct among humans, Wheatley was now able to be deployed anywhere in any capacity on the playing field.<p>

What was dangerous was the brief moments where Wheatley was able to override her Prometheus command codes. They were the ones that she had implanted in him prior to his download and that should have been infallable. The first time had been in the car park where he had somehow called himself Wheatley without any error codes or messages to slow his programming and punish him. Now, it had occured a second time when he had tried to apologize. Ideally she would try to bring him in to refresh and reinstall her personal commands but she had bigger fish to fry. Let his little group continue to trust him and leave it to them to help him. It saved her the risk of bringing him back to Aperture to do it herself. Let him continue to try to incite compassion in the little monster of a former test subject.

Caroline had never much cared for mechanics or doctors. They had, after all been the very parties that had so readily reduced her to the state she found herself in right now. However, doctors and mechanics were as fiercely greedy and territorial as businessmen.

Caroline may now be part memory bank and data but she had never forgotten the experience of having watched one of the most brilliant minds in business duke it out with their Black Mesa rivals for decades. The woman doctor was as much a businesswoman in the running of her pathetic excuse for a 'city' but she had no idea of the depths to which she was being manipulated within the capacity of her own role. She was driven by her desire to get rid of someone she perceived was someone threatening her heretofore monopoly of clientele but in reality she was fighting a much different battle, one that she was ignorant of and thus would lose. Caroline had already proved she was the superior manipulator. What use did she have for petty gossip and useless edible products?

Nonetheless, an unwitting pawn was still a pawn and if she could make GLaDOS' greatest enemy sing, then it was only icing on Caroline's cake.

Perhaps the cake metaphors were tempting fate.

While unwitting tools were often the stronger pieces in a game such as this, willing minions were also necessary. Caroline had to admit that did not have nearly enough of those. There were at least two more that were prime for deployment. As with all things that were in their 'prime', the decline was soon to follow. There was only a window in which to work.

While the Fact Core would make for a more loyal spy, he was already acting in that capacity, albeit in a rather annoying way.

Among the corrupt cores that had comprised the contingency that she and GLaDOS had used to dethrone Wheatley, the Fact core had not joined its fellows in their journey into space. Rather, it had clanked down somewhere into the primary lair. She could access the pink-eyed core's mainframe for short periods of time.

If GLaDOS knew of its existence she either could not hear its ramblings or else she did not care.

Caroline had been careful in manipulating her suddenly discovered 'eye on the ground' so-to-speak. She put no patterns in her viewpoint manipulations and only stayed long enough to ascertain and reassure herself where GLaDOS' attentions lay. The so-called 'matriarch' of Aperture seemed to only care to listen to her test-initiative robots as they clanked around the facility to a chorus of her whims and insults. Lately she seemed to be lavishing attention on a trio of baby birds the duo had retrieved. It was ironic, given the trials and tribulations She (and frankly Caroline as well) had suffered at the beaks of the avian creatures while they had been locked in that potato battery.

Caroline wondered if perhaps GLaDOS was beginning to suffer from the destructive virus known simply as time. While the thought tickled her it was equally sobering as it meant her parasitic position would be in jeopardy. If GLaDOS' power or facilities failed, she would go with it. It meant that she too would have to begin taking greater risks.

This brought her back to the choice at hand.

The Space Core was weak and erratic. The Fact Core was more stable but in a more dangerous position to reach.

Her attention was invariably drawn back towards GLaDOS prattling at her baby birds. The Lovett man – the one whose company she would retool, had some collateral. A child. No parent could stand to have their child threatened.

She wouldn't need to be ruthless with the Space Core. One of the core's strengths was its childishness. It went to Space and within a short while panicked and wanted back to Earth. A childlike structure was an enemy hiding in plain sight. Innocent and friendly but ready to strike at full force when the time came or if the need arose. Still, this was a gamble, given the strange idiosyncrasies that the core itself exhibited on a regular basis, but gambling was exactly what taking on a stratagem of increased risk meant.

It also meant she could not indulge in laughing at the ridiculous ways that the silly machines chose to be human. She would have to organize the core to android transfer on her own terms. The goal was to cross every t and dot every i as far as she could. For the core she chose a body that was in every capacity average for a teenage boy around the same age as Lovett's daughter. The hair and eyes were made a nondescript golden brown. He was not tall or short nor even possessed of any particularly memorable facial features, though for some reason his eyes looked rather doe-like and his lips a touch full no matter how she tried to configure them. At long last she gave up. Perfection was probably not the way to go with humans anyway. She had been a machine too long.

After that it was a simple matter of clothing the empty but now evidently male doll in a nondescript jeans and t-shirt combo. With that she deemed him presentable for personality download procedures

"Your name is to be Neil. You will respond to this from now on. Android, what is your name?" She'd chosen the name from a historic spaceman's achievement during her human self's own living history. It wasn't quite as good as Wheatley's new delegation to 'Prometheus' but she was on a schedule after all.

"My name is Neil." The doll replied as expected.

"Download Construct ID19-16-1-3-5"

The blank android began to emit the string of binary that signaled the download had begun.

She was not sure if it was just her or whether having left the Space Core for so long had caused the booting up procedure to feel as though it was taking longer than normal. Long minutes seemed to tick by as she strained to hear the sounds of memory systems receiving data from outer space over the sounds of the GLaDOS chassis thrumming around her. It was like drums now, pounding with electric power aroud her.

She tried to reassure herself but the truth was no matter how she tried to talk herself through suggestions of human nerves and the fact that she was still human at heart, she couldn't seem to recall the sound space of the chassis ever being quite this loud.

Then again, she was expecting the cold boot of the Space Core with a great deal of trepidation. That voice was so desperately shrill and piercing.

Her thoughts turned next to personal oversights. Perhaps she had waited too long? Perhaps the Space core had failed in the harsh environment of outer space or suffered some lapse in its expected function due to its already damaged and corrupted state?

Caroline killed a few moments by removing the thought from her mind. She hated when she thought too much like a machine and right now she was thinking just like a stupid procedure driven construct!

All at once the voice of the doll exploded into the high, bright voice of the Space Core.

"Hey! Hey! Where am I? Where am I? Hey! I'm on Earth! Oh! Earth! So glad! Space…too big! Too big!"

Caroline winced. The thing was too stupid to be allowed out like that.

"Neil."

"Neil! Neeeeillll! Named Neil! Neil!"

"Neil, run a full schematic on yourself and correct all located errors."

At least the core could be counted upon to take her orders. Obediently, Neil attached himself to the port and the diagnostics check was able to begin. Around her, the internal workings of the chassis rumbled but despite the success with the new addition to her army being rescued from space, Caroline still found everthing around her simply seemed louder.

She was just in the process of reminding herself that she was imagining things before a small power surge rocked through the chassis.

"Orange. Blue. You will remain in testing loadout indefinitely." The thrum of the chassis rang out around Caroline.

As she froze (figuratively) in place, a cool, male voice spoke up, almost in reply. "Mainframe systems scan started. Scanning for: ."

Caroline turned her attention to the still-disk checking half-husk of Neil. The scan showed him at 75% with an immense array of corrupted programs compiling themselves in the cache to be fixed. She had bought herself some time. Her presence was not entitled ' '. That would have been nothing short of moronic. Still, she held her proverbial breath as the systems scan rocked through the carapace like some kind of electric shock therapy, designed to inhumanely rid the chassis of a mental virus.

" does not exist." The announcer proclaimed above.

Neil's systems scan had crept to 95% during the proceedings.

"Scanning for programs that contain any and all instances of 'Caroline'" the Announcer's presence made itself known once more with his voice sounding for all the world to Caroline like the distant thunder of an oncoming storm.

Soon after she could feel the power of the scan that began to sweep the chassis like forked lightening. She watched as Neil's scan time clock ticked slowly but steadily upward in the kind of inhuman attentiveness to detail that all data downloads and virus checks seemed to aspire to in their final moments.

98% and the storm was seething around her.

At 99% the eye of the storm had arrived.

Caroline's entire focus remained on watching those numbers click forward into 100%. Frantically she began the transmission.

"Neil! Leave the facilities by the back B-grate corridors! Take the elevator out and head south to the Detroit Sectors! Sector Five! Find a girl named Lovett and make sure you -"

"Caroline deleted." the announcer stated calmly, the echoes of his artificially cheerful voice barely echoing in the muted acoustics of GLaDOS' lair.

"Fact: men with beards are fifty percent less likely to live past 30, due to being mistaken for famous military generals." The Fact core chimed in from it's crevasse on the floor.

GLaDOS wondered, as she resumed testing Orange and Blue, when the stupid little core would finally bite the dust. It had to be soon, but it wasn't worth her time to simply incinerate it. She could barely hear it anyway. If she simply focused on her testing (and it wasn't hard) he was practically inaudible. Speaking of which, when she was done with this next testing block, and of course after she had finished providing sustenance for her 'little killers', she would investigate just what it was that virus of a human personality 'Caroline' had been doing, squatting in her chassis like some kind of disgusting, fat human hobo.

* * *

><p>Neil felt as though he was back in space, drifting lazily among the stars. He could remember waking up frightened, but now he was wondering if he wasn't still in 'sleep' mode. All of the strange frantic pacing of his mind was wearing down.<p>

Did androids dream of electric sheep?

Did androids dream of the stars?

He did, or rather, had apparently.

He awoke to find himself on a white tile floor.

"Systems diagnostics complete. All systems defragmented. All error files repaired. Resuming normal functions." Neil's head snapped up in response and he looked around for the source of the polite and mechanical feminine voice. With a childish chuckle, he noticed the wire protruding from his side and removed it.

How silly of him.

He had barely a moment to sort out everything when his central processing system was hit with a bombardment of hasty commands which swam up into his mind, forming into data. Each was delivered in increasingly poor quality. He found himself starting with a detailed map, route and schematic of wherever he presently was. This was followed by a more crude and polar (NSEW) directional-based map. Just a short time later he was presented by a maze so crude it was grainy to the point of illegibility like a blurry facsimile transmission.

"Find the Lovett girl." The voice was back. It was accompanied by yet another file that had been transferred to his system. A much clearer picture this time of a girl whom, his system boot diagnostics told him ( despite the fact that he had not once looked in a reflective surface) was about the same age he was programmed to look. "Detroit Sector 5."

Neil examined his own hand against the picture he held of her. Her skin was the same shade as what covered his new knobbly appendages and alhough her hair was wispy and dark, he could see little lights reflected in her eyes.

In reality of course it had been the flash of the camera, but Neil neither knew nor cared what that meant. Only one thought permeated his mechanical brain in that instant:

_Look. Stars. Space._

He couldn't be sure why or how that thought had come to filter through his consciousness, but suddenly going to the side of this girl 'Lovett' seemed like an impossibly good idea or primary directive to have. He made to inspect the last file that had been delivered.

"File corrupt. Sending request back to host."

Neil waited a long time, still staring at the photograph he had brought up to view in his head and fixating on those little gold pinpricks.

"Unable to contact Host. File Corrupt. Host does not exist. Begin carrying out tasks. Will continue to search for source of corrupt file. Contacting first port."

Neil stood and began to carry out the duties he did have in their entirety. Perhaps at some point that broken file would catch up with him.

* * *

><p>"Fact: Craaaaaaaaaaaaiiiig isss the besttttt nameeee…thereeee….isssssssss."<p>

Not for the first time did Caroline liken her present state of mind to that of a human who had recently been exposed to a great deal of duress. Crouching in Craig's simple and corrupted body would not do forever but at least it had helped her to escape that brute GLaDOS' notice once more. She felt almost as if she were stuffed back into that potato, even though the notion was silly. Craig's body was not cramped at all.

The size of the place barely mattered. What was a more pressing issue was the fact that it was clear the Fact Core's number was almost up. She'd have to resume her residency in the chassis and soon. With any luck, Neil was on his way to the Detroit Sectors now.

All she could hope was that all had gone according to plan. It simply wouldn't do if Neil was still corrupted. Or worse, what potential dire consequences might befall her plan if that last file had not gotten through.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title:** Prometheus

**Status:**In Progress

**Fandom:**Portal (2)

**Rating:** T

**Genre: G**eneral

**Warnings:** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

**Pairings: **There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

**Summary: **The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

**Disclaimer:**The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

_And she lives in some forgotten song  
>And moves like she is zombie-strong<br>Breathes steady as the pendulum keeps swinging  
>You better hold on to yourself<em>

"Hold On To Yourself" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

* * *

><p>"Wake up, Wheatley."<p>

The warming rush of electricity that signalled his systems powering up thrummed through his body, the surge trickling into each and every space on his form. Naturally, his lips were the first things to move. "Prometheus." He muttered the correction that Caroline's programming provided him with, even as he could feel his limbs blossom to full manoeuvrability. His eyelids lifted on the sensation of his vision blinking and recalibrating its focusing. The snowy, blurry blobs contracted and sharpened as the seconds ticked by and finally he could see Eileen standing above him, smartly securing a small Phillips Head screwdriver mounted on what he had heretofore always believed was a ballpoint pen arm into her front shirt pocket.

He returned her grim but personable smile with a frown. The last time he had seen her, she had been bent over his arm which had been almost completely lifeless. As a matter of fact, he could not remember when he had returned to his sleep-like state.

"How do you feel, Wheatley?"

The expression was strange to him but his memory caught up. The Doctor said things like this to ill or hurt people all the time after she tried to fix them and so he had a go as to what he was supposed to do or say in response. "I suppose I'm supposed to tell you if I can move and all that?" he asked, hoping he had it right and did not sound stupid.

Eileen's grim smile twitched into something more natural. "That would be the general idea, yes."

Prometheus hoisted himself up on his elbow in a very natural reaction to face who he was talking to and realized his accomplishment for what it was. "I can move. No troubles either!"

The response was a pleased nod.

"Sit up all the way, please."

There was no mechanical whine to accompany the function. Everything seemed to run as fast and uncomplicated as ever.

"Here's where things get tricky." She continued, turning to retrieve a mirror from the table. She held up the reflective surface to Prometheus who glanced into its depths, bringing one long-fingered hand up to grasp his own jaw and turn his own cheek to inspect the damage.

The scar on his face was ugly.

Somehow, Jack had managed to replicate his choice of unduly pale skin, but the seam of it stood out, if possible even more paper-white, creating a bisected parabola on his cheek. He put a finger to it, dipping into the soft flesh. It did not physically hurt of course but a fresh wave of emotional pain pulsed through him as he reflected on the idea that Chell bore similar marks, marks that were his own fault.

"It's okay." He said staunchly. "I guess it makes me look more human."

Eileen smiled, a strange little secretive look on her face.

"What?" Prometheus asked. It was weird to see the woman this way.

"Thank you." She said simply, and it was difficult not to notice the way that more light seemed to be reflected in her eyes, as though they had gotten more moist.

"Um…for what?" Prometheus' face twisted. "I mean, you seem to be…well, on the verge of leaking and normally that means I've done something bad. Plus I can't imagine it could have been any fun, patching me up like that… " he trailed off, mind trying to process this strange turn of events before he continued, "…unless I've done something good, but I can't imagine I've managed anything like that in the past hour…and frankly I'm not such a moron I don't know what 'thank you' means."

"More like hours, plural, actually. You shut off all on your own for a while there. I've never seen anything quite like it. We were a bit concerned and stepped up the repairs. It's still only Sunday night, but it wasn't really like you were shut down, you were 'sleeping' I guess. It's not that strange for computers to go into sleep mode actually, but it got the job done, probably faster for all of us."

Her eyes searched Prometheus' face for his reactions. The android locked onto her expression and searched his own memory banks for strange procedures his mechanical 'subconscious' would have stored. He found none except for a few notes about several panels and wires being touched. They meshed with Eileen's story at least and he felt fine now, so he decided to leave it. All systems needed a good reboot after a shock.

"Well, I guess it worked. Maybe there's a reason it's called sleep. Isn't it meant to mean that human bodies are going to be non-functional for a few ticks?"

Eileen nodded. "That's true. However, I…" her face went red. "I still wanted to thank you. Jack hasn't…well, with your skin sample, he fixed his leg. It's not really good yet, but he has been embarrassed all these years and…" her face contorted, the pink spots in her face increasing to a point where Prometheus actually became worried. "He came home early last night is all."

She turned around and made to leave but he caught her hand. "I have a concept of human love, you know. I'm not a moron."

"I didn't think otherwise." she stuttered and Prometheus' eyes went wide. Her skin was hot and her eyes looked everywhere but at him.

"Look luv, I don't honestly see how this is so embarrassing for you. He was embarrassed for himself, not you. I mean…look at me, right? I have a lot more to answer for than a simple scar. Oh. You don't think this is going to be a problem do you? Scars make problems in relationships?"

Eileen laughed, wiping a tear away from her cheeks as the hot pink cooled down to its usual hue slowly but surely. "I don't think you'll have that issue."

To Prometheus' surprise she kissed him smartly on the forehead. "I'll set an alarm for you." She said, facing the door with a kind of quiet determination that seemed to say without words that she did not want to look at him. "J…Just in case your internal systems didn't reset properly. Besides, you wouldn't want to be late to work. On that note, do you remember what we said?"

Prometheus needed to work through that one until it dawned on him. "You mean about how my scar happened?"

"That's right." She finally turned back towards him, her expression now somewhat skewed, as though she had swallowed something nasty. Prometheus thought he knew what that was about, he had somewhere along the line gotten more than a good impression that Eileen and M did not get along. "I think M is right. You should show up tomorrow."

"Luv, that's just my schedule. Totally normal. Even have it on a bit of paper and I'm pretty sure even I can read it."

Eileen pursed her lips. "Yes, that's true, but humans will often take a day off if they're hurt or ill. If you show up and you feel as fine as you say…" she trailed off just long enough for Prometheus to nod and even flex his joints once more without issue. "…then therefore, it will diminish the effects of your injury if you're able to show up. Plus with Jack's work this doesn't look bad. Now. Listen closely because we're going to have to work on this. We have a few hours and this can't sound rehearsed."

"Erm. I know you stayed up late but if we do it like you're telling me, this will be, as you put it: rehearsed."

"Human." Eileen clarified.

"Oh."

Eileen's expression narrowed. "I'll get the Doctor. She's a better liar than I am." The words were spit from her mouth with the usual acid she displayed when referring to the other woman and she left the room briefly. True to her word, M arrived alone a few moments later.

"I'll be able to get in some practice for your friend." To Prometheus' surprise, she sounded badly strained. He'd been expecting something of an onslaught of sarcasm but instead she shifted and glanced toward the door as though her attention was elsewhere. Nonetheless the two spent an hour together until the Doctor was satisfied with Prometheus' performance. For whatever reason whatever he was saying, while he knew it was untruthful never came out the way it used to, with stuttering and the rolling of his optic (eyes) up towards the ceiling.

"Just as long as you come back straight after. We're starting to fix your girlfriend as soon as you do." That was the only other helpful advice she offered and Prometheus sank back into his bed and this time, the oblivion of 'sleep mode' came more quickly.

* * *

><p>Chell awoke to the thrum of voices outside her door and she climbed out of her covers to eavesdrop. She'd missed too much of the conversation already however and by the time she had stealthily cracked open the door, Prometheus-Wheatley was bidding M farewell, the sound of his gibbering nervous voice growing fainter and fainter as he moved toward the exit. The woman closed the surgery door behind him looking uncharacteristically anxious. She waited for her to head for her kitchen and make herself a cup of bitter coffee or start on putting together food for the two of them. Nor did she even begin to check her appointments. Instead, she gave the closed door a final glance and knelt with her head and shoulders half-way into a cupboard in her living area next to the television, digging around like an animal rooting in the forest and amassing a small, messy pile around her knees and feet.<p>

Her voice echoed suddenly from within the tiny space. "It's for you, you know, Chell."

Chell jumped. Not just because of the unexpected use of her real name but it was impossible for M to have known she was there. Chell was a leading expert in eavesdropping and knowing when someone was eavesdropping or watching you. She wished she could have asked the Doctor how she'd known she was behind the door. She could add it to the list of things that she could ask when the Doctor fixed her voice. If the Doctor fixed her voice.

Feeling it would do her no more good to hide, Chell stepped out and padded over to where the woman was still rifling through what seemed to be a big cardboard box which she had extracted from the depths of the cubby. She didn't look up when Chell approached but continued on the conversation as though there had been no indiscretion on Chell's part at all.

"How much do you know about how Aperture fell? See, that's what I'm not understanding. How can there be a Doctor working down there. The place has been dead for decades. "

Chell thought. She knew it had to do with GLaDOS and someone named Caroline and something about 'Bring Your Daughter To Work' Day.

"At first I thought it was a straight up scam. You know, tell a bunch of suckers some pretty words about cheap stimulants as long as they agree to stick around to test the effects."

Scowling, Chell stood with her arms akimbo, glaring her displeasure at the Doctor. After all this, how DARE she still suggest she would willingly stay there or worse, willingly come to someone like the Doctor herself for help.

Once more without looking behind her, M waved her off. "I've met you. I know that's not the case. It had to have been worse. You didn't know what you were getting into and you didn't sign yourself up. How did you not know? If I had to wager a guess, I'd suggest it was because you were born there, but that doesn't make sense either. If that were so, you'd be older than me!"

Chell's mind flashed back to the malfunctioning 'relaxation chamber' recording. Just how long a stretch of time did all those 9's comprise?

M finally surfaced, a strange black box with two white octagon shaped depressions in it clasped in one fist. "Managed to get this off some poor asshole out in a cabin when we were in a position to start driving out the mutts. Oh he was long dead by the time we got there, nothing usable for me body wise, but he'd probably lasted out there awhile. Drawings all over the walls and a literal hoard of pills – started making my own once I found out what they did. Powerful stuff…keeps me in business." M trailed off into some kind of horrific persona nostalgia. "Anyway, the other thing he had on him was this."

She handed over the rectangular shape and Chell turned it over in her hands. She noticed that they were trembling. What had GLaDOS said when she had died about having a black box that replayed back the last moments of her life? She glanced at M who was now fiddling with the television set and continuing to talk, paying her emotional responses unusually little mind.

"It's a video. Didn't have any use for it except…well hell, I guess I woulda loved to have the chance to get a look at old Cave Johnson's body in person. What the hell was he into that got him to this state?" She finally looked back, waving a careless hand at the set. "Far as I knew he was healthier than a horse – least that's what all the history books say."

Chell barely registered when M came back to retrieve the tape from her fingers. She sat in a nearby chair, eyes locked to the screen while the box was slid into a rectangular slot on some larger machine. The television screen, at first only showing static flickered to life with a picture that was grainy at first but swiftly came into focus. Chell had seen videos in Aperture before, often in the areas prior to the test chambers, but they all had only representations of people and turrets. She had watched 'entertainment' with M with all the nice-looking people with strange clothes and hairdos but with a sudden start she recognized perhaps not the people but definitely what they were discussing. She knew something for the first time since arriving that M didn't know and would never know unless she, Chell told her.

She was beginning to understand the Doctor's obsession with information.

On screen, the camera bobbed slowly but surely down a hall when a woman in a bright pink skirt and jacket with jutting shoulders and an enormous mass of frizzy curls and eyeliner bounced into view. They came to a halt and the woman adjusted her enormous black belt.

"Great, Tessie! Big smile now and remember, we have to get a shot of Johnson! Just flash those pearly whites there – I've seen Johnson's twinkie assistant, what's her name? Carla…?" There was a pause. "Caroline, Tess. Her name's Caroline. Anyway, she looks like hell lately but that'll be good for you. Man might look like Skeletor but I'll bet you twenty-to-one his dick still works!"

"Eyeewwww, Todd! Don't be baggin' on me! I'm not sucking some old guy's dick! Not even for y—"

"Hey! We're on in five kids!"

The pink-jumpsuited woman struck a pose, hefting and adjusting her large chest and flashing a smile that showed all of her gleaming teeth.

"Four, Three, Two, One…and roll!" Came the second voice from off camera.

"This is Tess Underwood, reporting live from Aperture Science where the big story on everyone's lips is Cave Johnson's 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day'! As Steve in the studio just told us, everyone expected that Aperture would be releasing a project to rival Black Mesa's famous 'Gravity Gun'! Instead, Aperture has opened its doors to more than just its top-secret elite and started a veritable science fair for America's young women to make a start furthering their scientific education!"

Ahead of them in the background, a second crew stood in a similar cluster of cameras trained on a man in a suit standing in front of them, but Tess and the focal point of the camera rotated away to stare down a different hallway.

"We've got an exclusive interview with Mr. Cave Johnson himself. Only here on Channel 4 Michigan News At Six!"

"Look. Hospital wing." M nudged Chell's arm. Even though she couldn't read the words, she recognized the Red Cross that figured on many of the Doctor's surgical supplies. She gave a brief nod and returned her attention to the screen.

Two men in lab coats raced by Tess and her crew. The woman's smile slipped slightly and her eyes followed them nervously but they didn't turn around or question the group at all.

The reporter barely had a moment to relax before three more people came walking by. One was a woman with two men flanked behind her. It didn't seem unusual except for the fact that the progression looked more like a prison march than an authority figure and her subordinates. The woman's brown eyes were so red each vein stood out prominently against the white and her long dark hair was greasy and lank and hung in strings. Her face was thin and angular but it did not suit her at all, she looked as though she had been scooped out, not just her flesh but something about her whole manner and carriage as well. She managed to totter to a stop and her gaze flicked left towards the news team, where for a brief moment something deep and menacing flickered into her raw eyes as she locked her gaze with Tess and then shifted it somewhere deep into the lens of the camera.

Chell knew her too, or rather she knew that stare. She had looked healthy and austere in the painted portrait deep in the bowels of Aperture.

One of her two escorts prodded her in her side, obviously hard as she tottered to the side like a drunk, her skinny ankles threatening to snap over in her black high heels. The bizarre trio travelled out of sight of the camera, where even Tess' professionalism had now been disrupted, her sunny fake smile now simply a gaping stare, caught only for a split second as Todd wheeled the contraption around to follow the progress of the trio until they had reached the end of the hall and disappeared out of sight.

"Er, Yes. Yes, Steve we're still here. Not to worry, just a little glitch in the system. Let's carry on with our exclusive interview!"

Tess was suddenly back in the frame, just in time for the corners of her mouth to relift and the movement forward to start once more. They paused outside a wide-set of swinging double doors and the reporter's voice dropped to a stage-whisper. Chell realized that she and the Doctor were both leaning forwards in their seats to catch every word from the television set's speaker.

"For those of you just tuning in, this is Tess Underwood with a Channel 4 Michigan News at Six exclusive. We're here for an in-person interview with Mr. Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science!"

The woman's hand rest against the doors, her matching pink fingernails clacking against the metal and belying her nervousness even through her vocal professionalism. Chell caught the rasp of her grinding teeth as she applied pressure and the door swung in.

The cameras coming in behind her went dark suddenly as they caught a close up of the reporter's shoulder blades and then pulled back. The man in the bed was surely dead. Skeletal with liver spots covering his papery skin which hung off his slack and sunken face. Patches of hair in grey wisps floated like cirrus clouds above his scalp.

The crew was silent, aghast at this scene that they knew full well they had no right to be privy to.

The eyes of the man in the bed shot open.

"Sweet shit, Caroline, you look like a hooker!" he rasped, his now-wide eyes locking onto the reporter, who stood as rigid as a statue. "I told you to get cleaned up, not put on more bloody makeup! Give those sonsofbitches a show!"

Tess the reporter finally cottoned on that he had been talking to her. To her slight credit, she was obviously making an effort to hide how offended she was by his comment, despite the fact that she had been the one to break into his private sick bay

"Mr. Cave Johnson, my name is Tess Underwood. I'm from Channel 4 Michigan News at 6. We—"

Cave Johnson opened his mouth and with a yell that didn't seem to belong to a man that frail, looked around frantically. "Caroline?! What in the hell is this Caroline! Someone get these idiots out of here!"

The camera crew and its reporter froze in place once more, like a children's game. No reply came.

"Caroline?" there was a hitch in his voice suddenly. "Caroline?"

He looked around and fell back onto the pillows. This lasted about a split second before he arched up once more. "GODDAMNIT, CAROLINE! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, WOMAN? ARE YOU FEELING ALRIGHT? CAROLINE!?"

"Well Steve, it looks like that's all we have time for. Thank you for your time, Mr. Johnson!"

Tess' mouth pressed into a line and she turned back towards the cameras, ready to drive the crew out. Chell did not require the Doctor's muttered explanation of the film's worth, even without Johnson's testimony or explanation for 'Bring Your Daughter To Work' Day.

Just as this thought had permeated her brain, a voice, grainy with the age of the recording but absolutely unmistakable issued out of the tape.

"Yes, I do believe I am feeling wonderful Mr. Johnson. I think I will be very happy here. Oh look. I have a new friend already. The two of us will be quite instru—" there was a hiccup in the recording. "I think that you are right new friend. I should not push the button. It is a very good idea that you should."

There was a long, drawn out pause.

"Oh no, it's just a little surprise for everyone. I think our guests would like some cake."

There was a mechanical sounding beep, accompanied by the heavy metal-on-metal but very final clunk of a lock sliding shut.

Chell knew how it ended.

* * *

><p>The streets were naturally deserted but Prometheus had slightly less to fear than most. Being not of flesh and blood he was not as likely to attract unwanted attention from the infected.<p>

He was waiting to be accosted by Rick but apparently the other android had decided that his message had stuck or perhaps he simply believed Prometheus to be still broken. Either way, apart from some mangy looking cat jumping into a trash can, the walk was quiet.

"Christ on a cracker, Prometheus!" Hank Lovett's eyes zeroed in on the ugly scar that adorned Prometheus' cheek. "You get into a fight?"

His hand flew to his cheek. "Er yes. Coming back from work, it was dark and I didn't see my attacker. I um, didn't have any money on me so he took off right quick once he figured I wasn't worth anything."

There was a long pause. For a moment, Prometheus believed he'd blown the story, even for all his practice. Finally Hank whistled through his teeth. "One hell of a scar…but I suppose you got lucky living with the Doctor and all."

"Right. Yeah. Lucky."

"Huh. Knew it couldn't be true."

"Sorry, but what can't be true?"

Hank shook his head. "Heard she has some kind of mystery medication that can heal everything, but I guess that's bullshit after all."

Shuddering deeply at the closeness with which he had come to being discovered, Prometheus nodded. "Yes, Total rot, the whole thing." He managed. It wasn't a lie either – the strange red steam hadn't been able to heal all of Chell's old wounds and lacerations, had it?

"You should start carrying protection. You got a gun?"

"No." What use did he have for one when he could break a woman's nose with just his fists. It wouldn't have any use against a creation like Rick

"That's damn stupid. Can't be too careful. Talk to Eileen." With that, Hank seemed to deem the conversation over as he returned to his office, leaving Prometheus to set up the coffee maker, which became the background noise for his filing for the next twenty minutes.

He saw Rick only once that day but was mercifully spared his involvement, due to the goggle eyed woman who was a friend of Cyndi Kwan's also being present, a fact for which he was grateful.

Whatever he was doing, whatever Caroline had in store for him, he still could not fathom. She too was silent and the remainder of the day passed without instance.

It was probably too good to be true he thought, as he passed the body of the cat which had startled him this morning, lying dead in the alley having fallen to starvation or perhaps disease.

"You don't know how lucky you are." He told the stiff body in a somewhat subdued voice for him as he informed the world at large of his fears.

* * *

><p>Prometheus could tell something was wrong the instant he walked in. Chell was standing up and looked over at him with an expression that wasn't laced with pure hatred. Instead it resembled what he had seen in Aperture. Determination and perhaps a little fear.<p>

"Oh, I knew it." He moaned, putting a hand to his forehead. "What the bloody hell is it? Birds? Potatoes? Her?" His eyes widened. "Rick?"

"Get your things." The Doctor marched in, nodding at Prometheus with a dark expression and pulling out a shotgun. "We've got infected in our building. You're coming with. I can use you and it will be a good lesson."

"Lesson?"

"Yes. I'm taking point. Chell and Prometheus follow. Chell in the middle."

Bewildered, Prometheus followed the Doctor and Chell downstairs, unaware of what he was supposed to do and looking around with a confused expression. The Doctor came to D3, a door down from Prometheus' own flat and wrenched on the doorknob which came away in her hands. Prometheus' eyes flew open. Was it true that the Doctor could have gotten in at any time? If not, why didn't she?

There seemed to be no one inside. M motioned for them to stop and Prometheus barely managed to avoid knocking into Chell. The Doctor crept forward, putting her ear to one door. When Prometheus focussed on it there was a wheezing sound from inside as though from a human struggling to draw breath. With a jolt he realized where he'd heard that sound before and he glanced at Chell.

She glared back and he turned away to watch the Doctor again but not before a wave of guilt overcame him. She'd made that horrible gulping and hissing sound when he had booby-trapped the stale-mate button, flinging her body hard to the concrete Aperture floors.

She narrowed her eyes and turned to the other closed door, listening and then raising a foot to slam hard into it. He heard a creaking, splintering noise and M backed up, gritting her teeth and running into the door full tilt. It crashed to the ground and a chorus of high pitched screams rent the air.

"What happened?" she snarled.

Against his better judgement Prometheus crept forward to see three people huddled in what turned out to be the flat's toilet.

"Dad…"

"Your Dad started…smoking." M hissed and there was nothing compassionate in her tone. "You brought a damn Smoker into MY building. You leave that out on the streets."

"It's our –"

Prometheus had never seen M or indeed any human at all look like that. "You thought what. You thought Infected were like puppies or bad animals? Did you think you could give daddy a smack on the nose with a rolled up newspaper?"

"Don't…don't…" The older woman had stepped in front of the two children. The boy looked scared. Prometheus felt he would be too looking up into that snarl.

"Don't what? Don't give your son hell for being brainless?" M narrowed her eyes. "Get out of here you damn flying idiots. Prometheus. Take the stupid kids and this fucking twit of a woman up to my place, lock 'em in the surgery and tell them they're damn lucky to be alive."

Prometheus knew he had no heart to speak of but the woman and the boy looked so scared, the tiny girl hanging back around her mother's ankles, staring at the floor with tears in her eyes that he held out his hands without question. "Come on now, it'll be safe upstairs. I know she's scary but things will be better upstairs. Promise now, off we go, right this way."

Chell glanced over at him rather sharply. It seemed to make sense somehow that Wheatley would have a soft spot for women and children. In the heat of the moment it almost didn't occur to her to be suspicious of him or to try to deflect the three from following him out of her line of sight.

The android returned the stare, uncertain as to the meaning of the look.

Noticing him staring and considering the danger, Chell shook it off and Prometheus eventually turned to carry out the Doctor's orders.

"This way, this way!"

Before they had taken more than a few steps, the Doctor threw out her hand. "Wait. The little one can stay with me."

Prometheus' eyes widened as he watched M take the little girl's hand and lead her away. She continued to sob.

"Is that such a good idea?"

M nodded. "Oh definitely. I think she probably was very close to her Dad."

The statement was lost on Prometheus and evidently Chell as they both turned their heads towards her in obvious shock. It was a rather kind thing to say and certainly at total odds with the earlier rage.

Chell was a much better master of reading emotion. M was about as apt to comfort a crying child as GLaDOS would be to suddenly start making good on her promises of cake.

Prometheus however smiled broadly and trustingly. He ushered the frightened looking son and his mother, who seemed to be resigned to leave her daughter with the Doctor out of the flat. Once he had disappeared out the door, M nodded at Chell.

"Watch the door. I'll be right back."

She put her hand on the sobbing girls' shoulder and manoeuvred her out the door. Something about the situation didn't seem right to Chell. She looked at the smoking locked door and making her choice edged back towards the hallway. The exit was slightly ajar and she looked out.

The Doctor was kneeling to look into the girl's face. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she continued to stare at the floor. Diamond bright tears sparkled in the dim hallway lights and both were silent enough that the dying florescent bulbs could be heard to hum, even from Chell's vantage point.

"You got bit didn't you."

Chell had to strain to hear the words.

There was a long pause. Some more smoke leaked under the closed and locked door. Chell watched it dissipate into thin air and then returned her attention to what was going on outside.

It was hard to tell but the girl inclined her head a little in a brief nod.

M wrenched her chin up hard. Chell nearly bounced out the door to rush to the child's defense but her reflexes were still better than that. The sparkling of the tears was not caused by the florescence but by the fact that they were yellowed with the blood that was now falling thick and fast from the child's eyes.

"Daddy…"

"Isn't that sweet. You'll see him soon. I only wish you could tell others not to be so stupid." And with a mighty tug, the Doctor pulled the girl's head clean from her shoulders, one hand falling to snap the spine. "Witches shouldn't mess with Tanks."

Chell put a hand to her mouth before she realized that she didn't feel sick. Apparently the world outside Aperture was less unusual than she thought. Everything just tried to kill everything else. Humans were as vicious as GLaDOS had always said they were.

M dropped the body of the girl to the ground, the head rolling only once, inhibited by the nose and ears and other lumps and raised a blood-covered hand to her lips, shook her head violently and dropped it. "Chell? I need to take the kid somewhere…safe. Just keep an eye on the door and if anything breaks through start shooting. Aim for the head. I'll be back to cover it."

For once in her life Chell was grateful for her inability to speak.

She watched as M snatched up the body and the head and headed down the stairs, kicking a small red thing that turned on jets of water in the hall. The red and then suddenly pink liquid splashed down the steps and into a silver drain, as though it had never been.

At some point the water shut off. The smoke was coming thick and fast from beneath the door now, rising and curling into what could only be described as steam. The door flew open and Chell wheeled around, pointing the gun she'd been handed at the door.

"Relax."

Chell looked into the shorter woman's face, her glass-grey eyes searching for some humanity there. She held the gun up nervously when she found none, a splash of something rusty and brown at the corner of the woman's mouth. Evidently whatever was keeping her human hadn't quite kicked in fully. She hoped she would never find the fate of the body of the 'witch infected'.

M's eyes narrowed. "I'm fine."

Chell hoisted the gun higher. Not for nothing had she survived Aperture.

The Doctor glared harder. "You want to watch girl? You want to know? Then watch." She spun on her heel and wrenched open the door to the room and whatever was in there – presumably whatever was left of the father - jumped on the Doctor, knocking her hard to the floor.

The battle was vicious on both sides. The 'Smoker' as the Doctor had named it was prepared for a fight. Totally unlike the young girl. M was grappling with it while Chell backed towards the door. Her keen eyes had spotted what was actually happening,

The 'Infected' man was not fighting its deceptively powerful opponent. it was seemingly not interested in the Doctor at all, it was all too obviously trying to wrench itself free from her grasp and manoeuvre past her at all costs to get to Chell. She raised the gun, watching the writhing mass of flesh twisting in any random direction and the thing's eyes following her movements. It was Wheatley's rapid fire bombs all over again. It wasn't any different. She forced herself to think of the light thing in her grasp as just another Portal gun.

The shot rang out and the man's head snapped back on his long-stem neck, eyes rolling back into his head as a spurt of red splattered M's face.

Huffing the Doctor let the body slide to the ground and wheeled to face Chell, her whole chest shaking with deep breaths and obvious physical effort though her face was twisted into slack and uncertain shock.

Chell gazed back right into the black of M's irises with steady confidence, searching the other woman's countenance. She was unaffected by the fact that she was covered in blood but whatever had surprised her about her former patient's contribution to the effort had coaxed her violent eyes back to something that looked like her normal self.

Finally, she spoke.

"The plot thickens. Wouldn't have thought someone like you could fire that straight." She gave her one more blink, the first time she had let something slip that was telling to the other woman.

There was something in this, a flicker of attitude perhaps, that Chell realized she was all too familiar with. She returned the last stunned and perhaps accidental flicker of the eyelids with nothing more than her normal steely glare. That action made her at least more like herself than she had since being brought to this place against her will.

M turned and this time the former test subject did not flinch when a well-placed kick separated the man's head from his body with no more difficulty than a melon being popped open on the pavement.

"Best to make sure they're completely incapacitated." M added by way of explanation before elbowing her way past her and out the door, letting the body twitch into full submission and blood begin the slow procedure of oxidizing and congealing upon the cold ceramic floor.

Chell could only follow her out, pocketing the firearm. She would perhaps negotiate retaining it later. It still was not a portal gun but M's observation was confirmation of something vital: leaving behind Aperture's adrenal vapour and long fall boots had not diminished at least this one essential skill.

It had taught her something else about dealing with her new captor. Her walls were back up but at least now she realized they could also be broken. Rarely but not impossibly, and that was an advantage to be used in this new place.

What she was not prepared for was for M to lock herself into with the survivors of the family upon return to her flat and begin to regale them with what was obviously a roaring tirade and leaving herself alone with Wheatley-Prometheus in a very uncomfortable quasi-silence on the other side of the door.

She prepared herself for the utmost stupidity and was quickly rewarded with the familiar old babbling.

"Oh um. Hullo. Wouldn't want to be them, now would you?"

He made a jerky half gesture towards the closed door but settled for twisting his hands nervously. Chell found herself rather glad to fill the silence in spite of herself, with or without words as the case may be. She gave him the luxury of a short, curt nod.

He almost did not appear to take in the fact that she had acknowledged him at all, striding up and down the room like a caged animal, one hand tracing the uncannily human skin of his 'scar'.

"It's those humans. Er, the family rather, that is to say, makes me feel as though I've forgotten something. Something_ important_." He emphasized the last.

What could Prometheus possibly know about a family?

In that short moment, the strangest thought presented itself to Chell: could Prometheus have been human once? Someone who, like her, had become a test subject and –

"ROSE!" he shouted suddenly and Chell was grateful that the vehemence of his outburst made her laugh about the stupidity of her notion of Wheatley as some kind of /human/ with a family. "I was supposed to have waited for her at work, or she was supposed to have arrived and she didn't! Completely not there, not even a phone call and I just, I was worried about getting back here, don't ask me how I knew something was going on, I just did, there was this cat and I…oh that sounds mental, but the whole thing slipped my mind, didn't it?"

Chell's look was predictably blank. Then she made the connection: she did in fact know what he was talking about. It was the girl, the young girl from when she had first woken up in the surgery after being rescued.

"You've got to help me. Look, I know I don't really deserve any help but you could do it for her. Rose I mean, not Her – Her."

Watching him claw violently at his scalp, pick at the diligently repaired scar and practically throw himself violently about the room in fear, she felt a sense of something like triumph. She did not owe him any help and he was terrified, practically sick with fear and worry and he deserved nothing better.

He made a motion towards the surgery door once or twice and stopped, stumbling backwards with mounting terror in his eyes.

"She'll kill me if she finds out! She loves that kid, I think it-she-her-Rose is the only thing she loves!"

Chell had a vision of the Doctor, the one she'd met downstairs, levelled against Wheatley. Two violent, dangerous entities of whatever sort they were fighting it out to the end. It was the ending she had hoped for and tried desperately to engineer to no effect before her ill-fated release from Aperture's walls. What would it matter, who cared who won and perhaps, wouldn't it be great if they finished one another off in the end?

The woman's mind worked too quickly however and the viciousness of her outset assessment vanished. What did it matter? The Doctor intended on giving her back her voice. There was an opportunity to have everything she never did and she, at least seemed to have a somewhat different perspective than GLaDOS. Comparing her to GLaDOS would be playing into GLaDOS in her own head. The Doctor was different. Just as horrible but definitely different.

Wheatley was doing that bizarre almost-human sobbing but it was not his potential plight and nor to her great surprise what she could stand to gain that finally made up Chell's mind. She had watched the video earlier and she knew what had happened to all those young women who had been doomed to expire at GLaDOS' hands or perhaps unluckily without any life outside of a vegetative and brain damaged state in relaxation chambers that had claimed the mysterious 9-9-9-9 moments of her own hopes at a normal future.

Her hand closed around the hard metal of the weapon in her pocket and she reached out to touch Wheatley's arm. Not in sympathy but in promise.

For better or for worse, they were going to be partners once more and Chell just hoped she was not making a huge mistake.

"Oh thank…thank God, yes, that's right, thank something, all about God with you people, all that light-making and earth-making… and oh THANK YOU!" he eventually exalted, nearly falling over as he pulled up thankfully just shy of grabbing her arm or hand or some bit of her. At least it was familiar, all of the excitable random babble. She didn't think she could take much more of that maudlin, apologetic Wheatley.

She ignored his dithering and headed for the door, leaving the sound of his footsteps and still manic babbling to inform her that he was indeed following her.

* * *

><p>What passed for a school of Detroit Sector 5 was presided over by a homogenous mix of individuals. None of them held any real power and none of them wished to, as they looked to others to carry on that kind of responsibility. None of them could so much have imagined that so far the two most powerful strongholds had been penetrated more deeply than they could ever imagine.<p>

Ignorance was bliss.

There was very little for Rose to enjoy there. Rose Lovett's very name there was disgusting. The only girl who had a name like 'Rose' as her father happened to be the only person who might have had a parent who could have possibly seen a real one to have named his child for it.

She knew herself she was not a bad child or a disobedient one. She liked almost all of the things the other children (the sane ones, at least) liked but she also knew why she was resented: she had warm clothes, food almost all the time and not simply from her father but also from M who had been more of a friend than any of her peers.

Far apart from that, the school was a dumping ground for many of M's patients. Only one teacher, Mr. Philips ever spoke to her and while she had clung to his somewhat rudimentary math lessons as a child, as she got older and wiser she began to have the very strong sense that this was not a man she should remain very attached to.

From that day on there was very little there.

Children came and went from the school like clockwork but her father insisted upon his own personal bias that she continue to attend, most likely to break up extended time with M.

Even she did not give the strange, hysterical blonde child a second thought. It was another of the school's 'permanent residents', likely doomed to die within its walls. That was the normal fate of the children who expired within.

"Oh, he moved away." Some individual deigning to call themselves 'teacher' would say.

Everyone accepted it as fact: as though they could have moved to the destroyed Sector 4 or the Infected grounds that comprised Sector 5, but everyone knew the real truth.

He seemed intent on following her around though taking to edging closer and closer to her.

She began to edge away but he caught up, moving with a strange jerk to his motion. His eyes were almost manic and for the most horrible instant she believed she might have made the mistake that every adult in her life had always warned her against: allowed an Infected to get close.

"Spaaaaace!" he all but squealed in her ear, drawing out the 'a' sound. "Went to space once but I like Earth better, much better, Space! Space!"

Rose's eyes went wide and for the first time ever she decided to try ditching class. This kid was mad, utterly mad! She left her rucksack and her jacket in the coat room and began to run as fast as she could down the well-travelled path that lead to her father's work with the kid's high pitched laughter and over-long vowels trailing behind her like an animal.

She could feel her trainers pounding the ground and hear the uneven rhythm in her ears. She ran on instinct, her breath burning in her lungs and threatening to slow her down but she wouldn't stop.

He had her caught in a second, his arms around her waist and dragging her with inhuman strength. One hand was over her mouth.

The world flew by her with no effort but with the same terrifying speed at which she'd been running previously. She was too winded to fight and his iron grip wouldn't let her get away

She was going to die

She was going to die

She was going to die

They stopped.

She screamed, her eyes closed and squeezing what little breath she'd managed to let back into her lungs out into the night air. Only one restraint remained around her wrist, holding her in place.

As the scream's power died with the last of the oxygen she had left, she opened her eyes. The boy was staring at her as if nothing had happened and he hadn't dragged her like some kind of crazy person off of half a city.

The shackle around her wrist was not, as she imagined, a cuff. It was the boy's wrist.

They were outside.

She gulped down oxygen like she was starving as she was finally able to take in her surroundings.

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. The generator, just inside the fence that separated Detroit Sector 5 from the wilderness outside stared back at her. The boy was barely paying attention to her now, holding the fence with his free hand and straining to look up at the stars.

"Space."


	6. Chapter 6

****Title:**** Prometheus

****Status: ****In Progress

****Fandom:****Portal (2)

****Rating:**** T

****Genre:****General

****Warnings:**** Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

****Pairings: ****There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

****Summary: ****The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

****Disclaimer: ****The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

"…Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown  
>And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command<br>Tell that its sculptor well those passions read  
>Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<br>The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed…"  
>- Excerpt from <em>Ozymandias<em> by Percy Bysshe Shelley

* * *

><p>It took Chell a few minutes to realize that Prometheus was no longer with her. The hallway had been filled with the sound of their dual footfalls not more than a moment ago. Now, the grey concrete close was silent and the sound of her own breathing seemed excessively loud. A chill of fear shot through Chell from the soles of her feet to the top of her head and she hated the sensation. Everything about this grey and white concrete hole from M's sterile tables to this cold back alleyway with its dull shades of grey and the sudden absence of an artificial intelligence present to speak to made her feel as though the fields and the sun and the sky with its shifting colours had been no more than a dream.<p>

She chose to focus on her ire at Wheatley, or whatever stupid thing he was calling himself now. It was typical of him. Hadn't changed a bit, had he? He talked about being brave, played at having compassion but when push came to shove, he turned tail like the coward he was and would always be. After all, he was still just a robot and a robot couldn't go against his (stupid, moronic) programming.

__Unless they are forced to__. Chell thought to herself. After all, GLaDOS hadn't been able to avoid letting her leave, even having apparently deleted Caroline's presence from her system. What had all that even been about? Had she just deluded herself into believing that because the A.I had wanted to return to her position of power in the chassis that she'd somehow developed some sense of compassion along the way? If she really had managed to trick herself into believing that she may well be as brain-damaged as Wheatley had claimed she was. Furthermore, why was she even thinking of it now?

Unfortunately, all of her thoughts always seemed to return to Aperture anyway and for once she was grateful for the return of Wheatley clomping down the stairs, the irony of the situation notwithstanding. To further derail her negative train of thought, she put her hands on her hips and glared up at the android.

"I thought we might go a bit faster if we took the lorry."

Chell blinked at him in confusion.

"Sorry. The truck" He amended.

Her response was to scowl even deeper and shrug to show she was still confused.

He smacked his head with a hand, eliciting a clang; he had used the one holding the keys of course. "Oh, that's right! You were sick!"

Naturally he would have to bring that up. Chell felt a fresh wave of humiliation rise up in her at the notion that Wheatley, stupid, annoying, murderous traitor that he was, was now on the suddenly rapidly growing list of people that she owed a great deal of her continued existence in this mortal coil to.

She finally realized what his strange statement and what he had gone back for meant. In a flash the keys were out of his hand and clattering at the bottom of the stairwell.

Prometheus took off after them, taking the stairs three at a time "Okay, I am hearing what you are saying luv and that is: 'Don't drive Prometheus as you probably can't do it very well', and now I think of it you are probably very right but I absolutely have to get those back!" he called up to her from about three flights down. "At least I could have tried to drive, really I could have! Looks a bit like following a rail, what with the streets…and then once you get out of there, it's just like floating along an excursion tunnel going any which way you wa-"

Chell highly doubted that but she also was convinced that this would put an end to the issue. She was only too glad to push through the industrial-heavy door separating her from a place that didn't resemble the facility so strongly. It had the added bonus of cutting Wheatley off mid-ramble. Prometheus was left with no choice but to race back up to the ground level and trot after her as fast as he was able.

This proved to be a rather simple task after all.

Any organization that the plan had heretofore held promptly died the moment they exited the building. Chell realized that she was stuck with the android as she had to return to the building and fulfil her promise to M. Her frustration deepened. Given the disturbance with the Infected from earlier she had not had the opportunity to begin any of her attempts at treatment and thus she had no way to ask Prometheus where the girl had gone. The whole problem was only exacerbated by the fact that she knew he did not know himself. She drew back her fist but remembered that he was not actually made of flesh before she hurt herself.

"Please…" Prometheus walked out into the night and looked up wards.

Chell copied his motions. She found nothing but inky black to meet her gaze but there was a touch of something familiar. A gleam of metal reflected in the gloom. It wasn't the facility but of course it was there. Something artificial of course. She gave the sleeve of the android's shirt a sharp tug and jabbed a finger to draw his attention to it.

"You ah…want to know about the plate?"

She nodded in reply. Perhaps she could tell what the pull had been for a robot, particularly one from Aperture whose primary mode of movement had been a rail. Then again she was willing to admit that there might be something a bit further to it. She hadn't forgotten what it had been like to see the wheat field and the surrounding area for the first time. Even as much as she despised Wheatley, she would have expected him to look for help in a place like this. That at least was a somewhat harmless facet of his inherent overall nature.

"This way, luv. Come on." Prometheus spoke up suddenly, starting off down the street.

Chell had no choice but to follow, scowling again at the epithet and wondering if it would be worth the pain in her hand if she just hit him anyway. M could probably fix it in a second with that gun of hers.

* * *

><p>Prometheus couldn't understand why The Voice wasn't speaking to him anymore. He was on edge, nervous and jumpy as a drunk. If he'd had a frame of reference he probably would have described himself that way. He wrung his hands repeatedly as he walked until he swore he could feel them ache and jammed them into his pockets.<p>

He knew something about where the school was. What passed for a campus was very close to the merchandise district where his first ill-fated food services job had taken place. In the early days some of the children tried (and managed) to trick him into giving them free things. Even better than actually knowing where to go was the fact that his old partner had decided to follow him and probably had prevented him from doing something stupid and potentially fatal. She had thwarted those ideas just as boldly as before and alone this time for that matter. Still, she was there and that was something.

She even wanted him to speak to her. To share his knowledge with her.

If there was one thing that could lift Prometheus' spirits it was still the hope, any hope that he was not as stupid as everyone always said he was.

"Ah yes, the Plate. Well, I'm something of an expert on the Plate. Not a total expert but it's metal and I'm metal so we have something in common, right?"

He looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, her mouth set in a line. He forged ahead.

"Right. Well, ah, all the humans in the world got a flu. That's something that makes you really sick. Sort of all snarly and bitey and unwilling to listen to anything anyone says and basically just attacking people for no really good reason…um. Sort of like…. Well. Never mind. It's just not very good, let's leave it at that shall we? So the humans built something that's like the opposite of Her facility. To keep the bad things out and keep the good things in. Except not all of the things are…good…that are kept in. But most are, so that's something isn't it. Bloody marvellous really, humans helping themselves like that."

He glanced over. Without meeting his gaze, his companion gave a slow nod.

"So I'm guessing you understand. So um…it's bad if a person goes missing. Especially so if it happens to be one of you little ones. Plus um, the little one that's gone missing, her parent is sort of my boss and it really is sort of my fault I forgot all about her coming to the office. We're going to go there after the school, you know? That's a place where little humans go to learn things. Maybe you knew that already though, being human and all. Maybe you can tell me what you people learn there after the Doctor fixes your voice. I mean, if you want to."

This time when he looked, the woman was nodding with a strange expression on her face. It was sort of angry and sort of, well, sad all at the same time.

_You do know why, don't you?_

The Voice again, of course. Never could go on ahead and say anything useful for a change, could it?

"Why?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Prometheus could see Chell react with confusion to the strange turn his narrative had taken but Prometheus felt no compulsion to acknowledge her. Perhaps if he were just the slightest bit patient, just this once he would come out of this mess with a clean slate.

_Allow me to put it in terms you are familiar with_: 'Fatty Fatty No Parents'. _You really are a…_

"I get it! A moron. Yes yes, you've told me a million times. I know. Now if you're not going to be of any help finding Rose, just shut up, would you?"

With that, he strode ahead, guilt and Chell alike trotting along at his heels.

* * *

><p>Chell wasn't sure why she was following him. In retrospect she could easily have remained behind and pounded on that D-building door until someone let her back in. Now that she was away from it, her paranoia over how much it had looked like Aperture seemed ridiculous. She had instead willingly followed someone she hated and who had a track record of being untrustworthy. Perhaps it was some mildly ingrained compulsion or attraction to robots (and wouldn't that be a terrible thing) or maybe she was just curious to see how pathetically he would mess this up. There was no possible hope for her to find answers here. Not at all.<p>

Wheatley's chatter was at once rambling and derivative but there was some useful information contained within.

Abruptly, he began to speak nonsense. They were quite alone in the streets save for a few winking street lamps and yellow-bright back lit windows cutting small swaths through the gloom. No faces appeared in the frames and no figures came to the doorways to acknowledge or answer his query.

"Why?" he asked suddenly, but there was no answer save for a mild hum and the intermittent flicker of lights.

"I get it! A moron. Yes yes, you've told me a million times. I know. Now if you're not going to be of any help finding Rose, just shut up, would you?" Wheatley sped up, his long legs covering a lot of ground swiftly.

Was he trying to reprimand her? Or tell her that she'd been right? Or perhaps, that GLaDOS had been right? His tone was exasperating but strangely accepting and even defeated. Still, that couldn't be right. He was still talking as though he was expecting an answer. Whether or not he was malfunctioning, he was also half way down the street. Resolving to worry about it later she jogged to catch back up.

* * *

><p>They arrived eventually at a building surrounded by a high gate which he stopped in front of, peering through the chain link fence. It appeared to be their destination. Chell took note of the rust coated and crumbling chain wrapped around the entrance gates. She joined him at his side, peering into an ancient courtyard. She stayed there, clinging to the wire even though it reminded her of her first escape attempt, with the Party Escort Robot. The vicious thing had dragged her back down into Hell across a concrete landscape that looked just like this.<p>

This was supposed to be a school? A place where children came to learn and feel safe? This was what GLaDOS had taunted her with missing all that time and what Wheatley had not a moment ago been so curious about?

Once more, Chell was compelled to curse the memories that always seemed intent on surfacing. This time it was that maddening robotic declaration of 9-9-9-9 that burrowed its way into her brain. Just how much of her natural life and beyond had been siphoned away? How much had the world changed with this 'flu'? How out-of-date was GLaDOS, really?

And then of course - and she hated these pangs of guilt that had followed, as though he were worthy of her concern or even her pity – but just how long had Prometheus…Wheatley himself spent below the earth, looking and watching and waiting and talking his nonsense to himself and only himself?

The metal ball come android himself had torn the chain apart while she had been thinking and progressed forward into the yard. He had stopped now, standing almost in the dead centre of the dark place that seemed as desolate as any ruin. Chell could have told him that there were no children or any other humans here.

It turned out that she had been wrong. A spark of light flashed in the gloom. Prometheus crumpled and with it, Chell's resolve not to get involved further with her robotic companion. She crouched into a fighting stance, not for his aid but for her own sense of preservation.

She crouched there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the attack. A fist to come flying at her face, a kick to aimed at her side or the flash of a weapon. She turned in a wary circle, one arm up to support the Portal Gun that was no longer on her wrist.

She tried to make a fist, the only other weapons she had. Just as she did, something, rock hard and crushingly powerful, latched onto her wrist and contrived to wrestle her left arm behind her, straining to drive her face into the pavement.

Her paranoia went haywire. It was the Party Escort Robot! She'd been tricked! Wheatley had betrayed her again by bringing her here and she'd fallen for it!

Nonetheless, Chell was nothing if not resourceful and although she was caught in the throes of terror, she readily deployed any defences available to her. One arm lanced out in a wide arc and hit air. Her world turned upside down as the ground flew past her but this was a woman familiar with trans-dimensional travel. A little disorientation was nothing to worry about. She landed upright, ignoring the jolt that went up her legs in the absence of her long fall boots or knee replacements.

Evidently her opponent (who was not as she had believed in her panicked state the dreaded Party Escort Robot) had not been expecting her to retain her balance and by extension, retaliate.

A very human-sounding grunt came from somewhere nearby.

She still couldn't see who had attacked her and she kicked out again. She once again hit nothing but air and once again she was restrained, this time around her neck.

"The actual fuck do you think you're doing?"

Chell was breathing hard and clutching the hand which had been bent behind her back with brutal force. M's arm was what was pressed against the underside of her throat.

"I know you aren't an android you know." The Doctor continued, her breath heavy and oppressively hot on the side of Chell's face.

Chell's gaze flickered over to her right, then her left. Neither of these positions yielded results and so the woman kicked out once again with legs that were still immensely more powerful than her assailant could have imagined. This time she connected and gained some leverage, trying desperately to grapple with the other woman and get herself away.

They went skidding over the expanse concrete once more, this time with M above her, hanging on with that brute strength, her arms pressing their bodies tight together. She was not however trying to crush her Chell realized as they flew. She was trying to keep the skin on her back from getting shredded by the uneven, ruined pavement.

However, as foolish as it probably was, Chell was not done with the Doctor yet. She bent her knees and prepared for the fight to get uglier. She'd seen what M could do but after all that she had been through, she was not going to roll over like a good little test subject any longer if she could help it.

M responded by hauling Chell bodily around, sending her stumbling forward. The Doctor calmly pulled her .33 on her when she turned around to face her again, standing steady with the firearm levelled at her heart.

"No, Sweetheart, it's over."

Just like that the fight had gone the way of many best laid plans.

Chell glared and Prometheus dithered, even though he was clearly the individual with the upper hand in this situation as neither the bullets from the gun nor even the strength of the Infected Medic would have damaged him before he could land a debilitating blow of his own.

"N-now, listen. It was my fault w-we're all out here...or rather..." he trailed off, deliberating on whether to mention the Voice's absence from the proceedings as of late. He stopped himself. "No. Just, my fault. That's all, but...it does I think it does have something to do with the other robot. The one that I told you about. Rick, you know? The one who got me all bunged up."

Though he did not want to read the expression of either woman there, he settled on Chell who was regarding him with a calm but intense expression. That wasn't so bad he supposed. Besides, it was probably more for M than it was for him. He remembered how she used to simply stare whenever anyone threatned her with Neurotoxin or other horrible torments.

He forced himself to do nothing more than fidget, wondering immediately if she suspected his only other well kept secret. He had spoken aloud to it earlier without even thinking of the consequences. Or, maybe, could she hear the Voice? Did it talk to her too? No. That was ridiculous. Humans didn't have...things in their heads like that. Programs. Functions. They needed devices to do that, didn't they?

One thing he did know was that his former friend and current...what, exactly? Tolerant companion perhaps? He was a bit beyond calling her even close to his 'mate' or even being allowed to be calling her something as intimate as 'partner'. At any rate, she was aware that Aperture had something to do with this and Aperture in Chell's mind probably meant Her.

Or maybe not.

Chell had not bothered to explain or even try to jump her way to intimating how she had gotten free. Maybe she had actually managed to kill Her again and just…climbed on out, the way he'd always suggested they do.

No. She was alive. Rick had said that, hadn't he? That the Voice - Caroline, rather - had wanted her facility back. That was the whole point of this exercise wasn't it? She had a habit of not staying Dead. Capital D.

Chell, he suppsoed would be involved for good now. Not because of him, but naturally if there was any chance at all that She was still alive - Capital A, Capital LIVE it would be in her best interests – or maybe just in her own personal pleasure - to put a stop to that.

Chell for her own part had been waiting for the moment when yet more Aperture technology would make itself known but despite being somewhat more clear-headed than Prometheus, she couldn't just look into someone's mind. Not even a robot's if she had the proper tools to do so.

She had not however, lost her powers of observation and a few particulars had garnered her attention. First there was Wheatley's personal admission of error and more intriguing; the fact that he had chosen to assume responsibility for his actions tonight. Both for loss of the child and his own neglignce and mental shortcomings. She grudgingly had to admit she was, perhaps not impressed but at least willing to acknowledge that it was consistent with what he had said to her about turning over a new leaf, so to speak.

Secondly and more worrisome, at least for her own peace of mind, nothing at all about this felt anything like GLaDOS. Her former antagonist-come-partner-come-neutral saviour preferred to address her directly, not scurry through back alleyways and dispatch minions. She lied and needled and attacked when she said she would not but always, always with the intent of making sure her victim was aware of just who was pulling the strings in the situation.

The bottom line was that if She had been one of these new mobile automatons then She would have appeared in 'person' long before now.

GLaDOS also certainly wouldn't choose to garner a reaction of sympathy for a child to whom she had negligible ties. She would assume, correctly (and likely vocally), that Chell would not deliberately tie herself to anyone. This girl was M's worry. Also Wheatley's apparently. Chell herself saw no reason to be out here other than the fact that the android had quite correctly linked the girl's safety with their own in the presence of M. That admittedly one-sided skirmish certainly proved that.

Wheatley himself also was definitely not a possibility of being the instigator in all of this. His reaction to the situation might have been touching for a less jaded individual, but Chell was not such a person. At the heart of the matter remained the fact that he was simply not capable of such an elaborate lie. She grudgingly had to admit that her analysis of him would make his apparent remorse true but he'd never been able to do much more than take existing things and modify them. His cube turrets, his test chambers, even his admittedly savvy final stand against her were no more than mere modifications on his predecessor's brilliance.

"...and really M, I knew I was supposed to have been waiting for her but I just forgot, I mean it just got pushed all the way back into my memory banks you see and-"

While Chell had been thinking to herself, Prometheus had been running his mouth, trying to rationalize his position to the Medic. M had not moved her gun from Chell but was at least apparently more interested in making sense of the AI's rambling half-explanation, half-apology.

He was cut off mid-babble by a short burst of melodic ringing.

The gun remained as still and steady as a rock while the opposite hand moved like fluid water. The Doctor calmly retrieved the icon-display device that had so confused Chell before from her pocket and spoke into it. "Eileen?"

Chell couldn't help but wonder how she knew who it was.

M listened for a moment and then made some twitchy movement with her hand before returning it to her pocket and finally lowering the firearm, tucking it into her belt on the opposite side and addressing the duo.

"Jack found them."

"Them?" Prometheus' last question was drowned out by the crunch of gravel underfoot and the hum of the Medigun as M contrived to heal the wounds sustained by herself and Chell during the fight.

The former test subject was reminded of the Medic's earlier warning, one that she was finally taking to heart. She would have to learn how to defend herself in this new environment. The outcome of the attack had damaged her confidence somewhat but not her resolve. When her obligation to the Doctor had been seen to the end, she would have all the tools she needed to eke out her own life, hopefully far away from here.

* * *

><p>"Found these two out by the Generator."<p>

Jack and Eileen were waiting by the the entrance to Prometheus' D-2 flat. The young girl with the brown bird-feather hair whose name Chell now was able to identify as Rose Lovett stood to Eileen's left. They were joined by a somewhat effeminate young male who appeared around the same age as the girl standing beside Jack on the far right.

It was impossible not to watch the boy. Quite apart from the fact that he was swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet as though he were standing up on a rocking chair, his eyes focussed and refocused themselves in strange patterns. First they darted every which way, then they focused again on the mess of an insect which had been smashed in its attempt to crawl up the wall, then more looking about until such time as they focussed on a crack a short distance away. Every so often in this strange ritual he would look up and his feet would turn inward. Jack's powerful hand on his shoulder prevented him from completing his attempt to turn himself around.

"It was the strangest thing." the man continued, rubbing his hand through they grey at his temples. "Besides the fact that I figured Rose here would have known better."

His wife's hand tightened around the girl's at her husband's mention of the name and Rose gave a slight nod of obvious understanding and abashed shame.

Prometheus felt a strange stab of envy at the sight. Eileen and Jack were partners who worked as a fluid team, just the way that he and Chell once were. He missed that. He knew that her willingness to help him earlier had been a whim of a choice, not obligation and certainly not acceptance of any of his attempts at apology.

"Would have just called you lot directly but I couldn't risk it. Something had torn a big hole straight through the fence and these two were wiggling through it when I arrived. Rosie, kiddo I honestly don't know what you were thinking." Jack repeated. "Your daddy taught you better. Had to call half my men out there to get it fixed pronto before anything could try getting in, let alone out."

A single tear trickled down Rose's cheek. M was nodding along at Jack's explanation but her gaze was locked on the girl. Her head was tucked to her chin as before but for someone as well-versed in human expression as the Medic, that was as much to express remorse for her lapse in judgement as it was to try and hide the fact that she knew differently from what the old law official had surmised about her situation.

Deciphering what Rose knew was as easy as glancing at Prometheus, something that both M and Chell ended up doing at the same time. It was obvious that whoever this kid was, he was another of whatever brand of mechanical person Prometheus and the still-absent Rick had become.

"I called Hank when we got back into the city limits." Eileen spoke up. "From what Rose has told me Prometheus, you are not to blame. She says these two had left from the school premises long before the end of the day. I took the liberty of informing her father of that fact."

Prometheus relaxed visibly but he affected the tone of a father reprimanding a small child. "Er, yes. Um. Thank you, Rose. I was expecting you at the office you know. I was terribly worried when I couldn't find you I don't mind telling you!"

It was a strange thing to watch something you knew was only a mechanical representation of a human relax but Chell chose not to dwell on it too long. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the attempt at paternal concern. It almost sounded like the annoying 'superior' tack he'd taken in the chassis. So much for Wheatley's newfound sense of responsibility.

"Rose! Rose! Oh my god, baby are you okay!?" The man's voice and a rapid staccato of footfalls preceded him up the steps. The young girl took one step towards the source of the sound but her fingers threaded through Eileens' and she only went as far as the tether of their arms allowed.

He stumbled over the last three steps that he'd taken three at a time and came dangerously close to doing a face-first plant in the middle of the hall, his oddly formal business choice of a three-piece suit with french cuffs looking even less professional with the back and right front tail of the shirt sticking out from under the vest and the windsor knot on the tie loose and bunched out.

Hank's hands made a move to pluck the girl from Eileen's grasp but his hands were shaking too badly for him to do so and he settled for scratching his arms frantically through the fabric of his button-down.

To complete the queering of the professional illusion; when he spoke Chell noticed that his teeth were stained a brownish-yellowish colour and up close his hair was not slicked back with gel. Grase or something close to had been applied in liberal quantities to create the illusion. Hadn't the Medic said something about drugs and doing damage to her hair and teeth during her rescue?

It was strange to be around other people and feel the nuances of their relationships and their judgements of her. Not for the first time since this whole fiasco had started did Chell feel much closer to Prometheus than to the rest of the people there. She was different. An outcast for life it seemed

_Did you just refer to Wheatley as Prometheus? Stop that, right now._

"You're obviously worried!" M exclaimed but there was a layer to her professional Medic's tone suggesting that it wasn't concern for Hank's state of mind that was foremost in her thoughts. "I think you and Rose and our young friend here should spend the night. Right, Prometheus?"

Hank looked sharply over at the android who for a moment seemed not to register that there were people staring at him.

He swiftly called to mind a few of the Doctor's choice medical vocabulary.

"Oh. Yes. Quite right. For uh, trauma. And...um...the like."

Hank pursed his lips but looked at his shaking hands as though they would choose for him. Evidently they had decided in the affirmative as he nodded with a short, shaky jerk of his head. "Alright. I suppose that would be for the best."

"Space." The boy who had been jittery but silent until this time spoke up, though the melancholy utterance was obviously not directed towards anyone besides himself. Maybe he had been talking to the squashed bug or the crack in the wall for all anyone there was aware.

Hank, Prometheus and Chell all gave the boy a somewhat knowing glance, though the second exchange between android and woman went unnoticed by the third party while he turned the majority of his attention to his daughter. He gave her a half-angry stare but something remorseful lingered in the display of parental sternness. "Please thank the good doctor for her hospitality."

Almost in tandem with the boy, Rose shuffled her feet and nodded. "Yes Daddy. Thank you M."

"Thank you."

Just like that, the group parted ways. Eileen and Jack down the stairs and Hank shepherded the two children up the stairs towards M's flat. Prometheus started to turn towards his own door but the Doctor stopped him. "Oh you're coming too. I told you you were important to Miss Silent's recovery process."

* * *

><p>The speech therapy procedure fortunately did not take place in the Doctor's lab, a fact for which Chell was exceedingly grateful. Instead, while the remainder of the group was directed towards the sitting room adjacent to the surgery, Prometheus and Chell were directed into the private bedroom Chell had been occupying for the past while.<p>

M took a seat on the bed, spreading to take up most of the room.

"We'll…we'll just um, find the floor." Prometheus muttered under his breath, just low enough so as not to be overheard by anyone other than the former test subject. "Seems a bit unfair when Chell's the patient."

Chell took the opportunity to seat herself without complaint which in her case meant maintaining a neutral expression and ignoring the Android entirely; something she had a great deal of practice with.

She was correct in assuming she would not be able to maintain selective hearing or her wall of willful ignorance of his presence for very long.

"Very well then. We're going to multitask. First off, missy, we're going to start you out with breathing exercises to get those muscles working again. Back straight and head forward." The Doctor hopped off the bed and walked around behind Chell, tipping up her chin.

Remembering the outcome of the fight, Chell flinched visibly and tried to jerk away, causing the other woman's fingers to tighten on her chin. "Ah-ah. I'm not going to garrote you, okay? Back straight, head forward. That's a girl. Very nice. Now hold steady there and deep breath in and hold it…good, now keep holding and swallow…"

Prometheus watched with interest. He too had tensed when the Doctor had touched Chell. He knew he'd been a coward again during the struggle but this time he was determined not to hold back in offering aid if it looked like a fight was going to break out.

"…and keep holding and cough and exhale. Excellent. Now hold up like that, repeat what I showed you and take this pen."

M pulled a pen from her pocket, paused to straighten Chell's head back to its original position while she put it in her hand and snapped her fingers.

"English! Front and centre!"

It always took Prometheus a second to recognize when M was speaking to him and it took a few more staccato clicks before he finally snapped to attention. "Alright your job is to sit in front of her and hold up this pad of paper at eye-level."

Being too short to reach the android's shoulders, M pointed at a spot on the floor directly in front of Chell, commanding him to sit like a dog. Considering that Prometheus had no knowledge of dogs besides the hybrid type of creatures he had shot at, the slight against him went unnoticed, not even when M smiled at his obedience.

"Good boy." She put the yellow lined pad of paper into his hands, turning it the right way around so the cardboard backing was facing him and adjusted the height of his hand for the make-shift easel as she had with Chell's face.

Of course, Chell seemed to require no extra assistance, competently and patiently repeating her prescribed exercises as necessary.

"Now I want you to draw something – anything that Motor-head here would be able to describe for me. You both came from the same place and while I don't care if he can read or not, I have to have you be able to read and speak. You're pretty but I'll be damned if you are the least charismatic individual I have ever met. That means you need to read prepared speeches…but we'll wait to see if we can even get that far. First, we'll kill a few birds with one stone. I'm going to go out and when I come back, we'll see what we have to work with."

M turned and left the room and Chell lifted her pen to the paper, determinedly looking at the yellow sheets and avoiding allowing any part of Prometheus into her line of vision.

She was definitely doing something and not simply ignoring him as the android could feel the pressure of the pen through the paper.

"You know she does that to all of us." Prometheus never could stand the silence, not even when he supposed the girl should be concentrating, but while her six predecessors had all fallen, Chell had never messed up once, not even when he shouted unexpectedly. "Always takes the good chair in my flat. Probably we could have been nice and comfortable too, sitting on that bed and all!"

He craned his neck to try and get a look at the front of the pad and received a swift glare when he jostled it. He settled back into position

"Right, right sorry. You know, it's just, it might be nice if we could talk to eachother I guess. Some of the others could talk. The ones before you. I was thinking about them just now."

Finally he seemed to have received some response as Chell's head jerked up imperceptibly and for just the briefest second he imagined her eyes looked up to meet his. He waited a moment but perhaps he had imagined the reaction.

"Yes, I thought maybe you were brain damaged because you didn't speak or talk to me. I guess you proved me wrong though." He ran his spare hand through his hair, pushing it into an even more pathetic mess. "Look, I don't know what you'd say to me if you did have a voice. I just know what I'd say to me and that'd be 'look Wheatley, shut up and go away.' Except I can't."

This time Chell stopped mid exercise and mid-scribble and looked at him.

"I said um…'look Prometheus, shut up and go away.' Is that not right? I mean, that's what you'd say if you could, isn't it?"

The woman across from him responded by taking in a deep breath and holding it while she coughed.

Sinking back into silence seemed to be the best decision for the present. He thought they were making some headway when she'd decided to accompany him to find Rose earlier. Or when she had asked him specifically about the Plate, like she wanted him to talk to her. Now it seemed they were right back to square one.

He cleared his throat. He'd shut up right after this, really he would. He just had to say one final thing first. "You know, you're the only one I really hoped would talk to me."

He was the one who dropped his eyes, unwilling to see her reaction or lack thereof.

There was several minutes of silence after that, broken only by the scratching of Chell's pen against the paper.

"Excellent!" M it appeared had returned from her sojourn. "Well it's all settled. You'll be attending school with Rose. Good ol' Daddy agreed to it right away, I don't mind telling you. I just gave him all the information he needed to know. Plus of course a little treat for being such a good patient.. Missy here can go to help her learn her three R's and she's pretty handy with those legs of hers. We'll keep any little mishaps like tonight from happening again with a part-time bodyguard around. Oh and Hank knows you're an android. I may have let that slip."

Prometheus dropped the pad.

"What?"

"Well I certainly don't know the PC term for it. What are you calling yourselves these days? Mechanical man? AI? Robots?" The Doctor's tone took a delicate turn as though she believed that had actually been the reason for Prometheus' reaction the whole time.

"I…why would you do that?"

M shrugged. "Hank's got a little too much of a moral compass on him where his daughter's concerned. I just wanted to remind him of how much he doesn't know. I'm not losing a good customer and a good organ donor for later."

Prometheus closed his eyes. The Voice was not there, but he didn't need it to remind him of what he already knew.

He was _such_ an idiot.

"Anyway. Let's see what you've got here." M snapped her fingers again at Prometheus who once again refused to respond immediately, staring off into the ether.

It did not escape Chell's notice. Once more he seemed like he was speaking to or waiting for someone to speak who was not immediately present.

M pursed her lips and a whistle cut through the air. "Hey. That paper's not going to pick itself up, you know."

As if coming out of a dream, Prometheus knelt forward to retrieve the fallen pages, handing them up to M while focusing most of his attention on the ceiling. Although M simply seemed exasperated, Chell took note that the android had adopted the same pose when attempting to figure out which way to go to find the missing girl.

"Alright, let's focus here. Now that your throat is all warmed up, I want you to try making this sound. Not aloud. Just the noise: Ah. Like in 'apple."'

It was Chell's turn this time to freeze but she covered it more swiftly than Prometheus had. This did not escape the android's notice. It would have been in his usual nature to correct the Doctor, tell her he'd tried that already but Chell didn't get up and jump. She simply sat on the carpet, her face screwed up into a look of concentration, mouth working hard to make a sound that didn't seem to want to come despite her best efforts.

"You can do it you know! You're clever!" Prometheus felt as though his mind and mouth were disconnected somehow. The sentiment had seemed to come from nowhere in particular. He hadn't even been trying to be encouraging or contradictory to his earlier behaviour.

The former test subject seemed to have sensed it to because while she didn't meet his eyes, she gave the tiniest of nods before reapplying herself to her given task.

"Focus idiot! What are you two even doing here?" Prometheus found himself with the pad now shoved almost directly under his nose. He raised his hands to take it and followed M towards the bed. "Finally. So. Did she draw anything you might be able to recognize?"

At last able to get a good look at what Chell had been drawing while he had held up the canvas, the android let his eyes dart around the page at the shaky, poor attempts drawings. However many talents Chell may have, art clearly was not one of her greater skills.

There though, in the upper corner was finally something he was able to recognize without question. A short, fat little oval with long, spindly legs and a round circle in the centre.

He pointed at it. "A turret gun. It was a sort of trap. A defense devic—"

M grabbed the pad. "I know what a turret gun is. They found a warehouse full of them a number of years ago. Boxes of them, unopened. Word has it they were a complete and utter failure of a home security system. Wound up attacking the home owners more than any potential prowlers. Cost Aperture a pretty penny." She wrote a bunch of those strange characters that Prometheus had never been able to make any sense of beneath them.

"Oh and that…that's um, a water trap I think. A lot of the water was contaminated because of the salt mines and the moon rock waste product. It was lethal for any human to touch. Dissolved them. Just like that. I remember this one, it was pretty awful. One minute they were there and the next just screaming and bobbing and then they were all sort of white and…I don't know, funny shaped and then boom nothing at all. More of a fizzle, actually than a proper 'boom'."

"So there were a lot of security traps set up. Turrets and water traps. What else?" She penciled in something underneath the wavy lines and the sort of man-shaped thing falling into it. Belatedly, Prometheus realized that those weird characters must read 'Water Trap' and the ones underneath the other picture must read 'Turret Gun'.

There had never been any writing on the Test Chamber signs, though. He wondered if She could even read. Maybe not.

He clapped a hand to the side of his head as evidently fed up with his constant drifting off into his own mental processors, M had cuffed him on the 'ear'. "Really! Are. You. Malfunctioning? Because this page is not going to decipher itself!"

For the umpteenth time that day, Prometheus came back to reality and made a Herculean effort to refocus on Chell's 'artwork'. Dare he call it that? His eyes roved around the page until he found one more unmistakable representation.

"The deadly neurotoxin." It was a rather impressive-sounding warning tone he thought.

Instead of fear, M's face lit up with greed. "That's what I wanted to know about. Excellent. So this doctor thinks she can stockpile Neurotoxin, hm?"

"Loads of it. Whole chambers full of it, mate. I mean, Doctor. She just pumped it all right into the atmosphere! Not very nice I don't mind telling you. Really not fun for the test subjects..."

A number of things happened just then in quick succession. M shifted in a position of aggressive interest towards Prometheus who immediately shrank back, coming closer inch by inch to toppling off the other end of the bed.

Suddenly, M had stopped tormenting the Android while Prometheus himself was perched on the edge of the bed like an enormous parody of a baby bird just ready to attempt flight out of its nest for the first time. Both of them were now staring at Chell in the wake of the very first sound she had ever uttered, perhaps ever.

Prometheus punctuated the lone phoneme by finally managing to fall off the bed with a loud clang as he upset the rubbish bin.

* * *

><p>"F-f-f-f-aaaaaaaact….choooclate was discovered by the ancient cave men as a way to make the females of their tribes shut up for more than f-f-f-five minutes. Unfortunately this backfired when women found out about the plan and began demanding it, particularly during pregnancy."<p>

That one almost made a certain modicum of sense and apart from the shorting, that particular lapse in the AI's normal nonsense probably meant the Fact Core was on it's last legs. Caroline was rapidly becoming increasingly aware that she was running out of time and GLaDOS may be test-obsessed but she was most definitely on her guard now.

She wouldn't be surprised if the suspicious behemoth had some tertiary function that wasn't masturbating itself on four cameras at once. She'd been in there. Simply because she wasn't being as_ vocal_ about it as the moron was didn't mean that the test euphoria wasn't still running itself through her systems.

The players were in place and while it perhaps wasn't an ideal solution, the time had come to take centre stage, so to speak.

Presently, the biggest problem was the fact that Space core's function had been interrupted and potentially corrupted and now he and the trump card were way off course.

Trying to take the girl so soon had been a risky move to begin with but the good news was that GLaDOS still didn't know of her presence or her plan. What she needed was the one thing she didn't have: more time.

"Fact: Sir Issac Neuton was not the first person to discover gravity. Innnnnn faact, the fiiiiirst person was squassshhhhed by a giiiiiiant apple. The one that feeeellll on Neu-Neu-Neuton was just muuuuuch smaller."

Who could think with that background noise anyway? It was even starting to affect her decision making processes.

Question: what would Cave have done in this situation?

That was simple. He'd ordered her put into the machine, hadn't he?

She had no options left. No one to take the fall. It was too dangerous for any of the former cores to return now that she was looking for functional programs and not organic life. If she put the Fact core into the chassis, it's damaged state would render her incapable of doing her work and would be discovered and deleted before any uploads could take place at all.

Then of course it would be a matter of time before she was discovered in the old core body as it would be functional as long as she was there to run it. Even if GLaDOS did somehow miss what was intruding into her functions, Caroline didn't think she had it in her to make up that many innane and faulty bits of trivia.

That said, letting it end here was simply not an option.

There was one other option and she didn't like it. It was too much like giving control over to GLaDOS again. Too much like a step backwards to the blackouts in the potato where she was always wrestling for control with the Beast.

On the other hand, The Fact Core was at least as weak as she had once been in that tuber. Sometimes to take two steps forward you had to take one step back, and if she just could rock the handles of the tremulous little core, she could just reach one of GLaDOS many tendrils of power that arched around her lair like some kind of nebulous cephalopod.

_One of those might just have enough power to…_

_Ah…yes…_

The little core body scraped a little as it nudged the narrow confines of its rat hole, the sound blending with the general settling of straining metal valves and whirring machinery.

_A little further_

"Faaa-Faa-ccccttt…..:"

The circuits connected and the Fact Core's voice evaporated into a static burst as the pink optic, dulled over time finally failed to cast its light from its tiny crevice as it winked out into grey.

Far above the thrum of GlaDOS familiar sarcasm laced purr cut through the sudden relative silence.

"Finally."

* * *

><p>It was beyond dark. No light to seep under a door frame or through a crack, no small sliver of moon to provide comfort on a stormy night. It was so eerily like a time long past that Caroline opened her mouth and screamed aloud before realizing that she had in fact one to do so with. The sound of it rang in her own ears, far too loud and echoing at top pitch volume. She tried to put her hands up to cover them and block out the noise but her fingers hit cold metal instead.<p>

She was back in her coffin, in the nightmare place that precluded all of 99999 and so on years of personal hell.

She was not going to go through the upload all over again, not a chance. She couldn't, wouldn't! Damn her pride this time.

"Let me out of here! Let me out!"

She thrashed and thumped, felt whatever was keeping her here in the dark wiggle beneath her, and a crack of light seeped in.

"Please!" She called, ignoring the reverberating echo. "Let me out of here! Let me OUT!"

For what seemed like an eternity, some of which simply seemed like an out-of-body dream she continued to move, back and forth in her box. Her body might have been running on some kind of adrenaline, twisting tirelessly as slowly, slowly, the sliver of light increased to a centimetre, an inch and then there was light filtering into the box and finally the sensation of falling and landing with a resounding clang and a jolt.

Her eyes opened and she stared up at the ceiling. It looked familiar. It was in Aperture.

She looked down at herself and struggled to sit up in the plain, androgynous and oh so definitely robotic body.

It had worked.

It had really worked. She had escaped the little pink core and downloaded her code into an android, all without GLaDOS noticing.

_Fact: She really was brilliant._

Where had that come from?

_Oh._

Of course. It was in here too. Suddenly she felt dirty. She was squatting again…or was she forcing that core to squat in her body instead? Either way it was GLaDOS all over again. What kind of agency did the Fact core even have? Could she delete it? Could it delete her? Did it even in fact know where it was, or had its final moments in the dying core weakened it?

Maybe she could swap it into one of these other bodies…

* * *

><p>She was standing on a catwalk now. Sitting, actually with her legs dangling straight into a pit that seemed bottomless, mist and steam and other byproducts of machines cooling rising up from it to greet her.<p>

How had she gotten here, anyway? The last thing she remembered was…she took another cursory glance at her hands. They were paper white, but human shaped instead of the spindly bare mechanical joints they had been before.

Quickly she backpedalled away from the edge onto a more solid overhang and looked around for a mirror. Finding none she used the only tools left to explore herself, her tactile senses.

She started at the top, running her fingers over a smooth scalp, coated with just the barest hint of fuzz. Not even stubble. Like a baby, she thought. The shadow she cast against the grey wall (this was definitely somewhere in Aperture but how could she be sure where?) depicted a human shaped face with a bare skull. There was no way to tell the colour of her eyes or even get a proper sense of the shape of her nose, but her face was obviously covered in simulated flesh and seemed to be of no particularly unusual shape, although further inspection of the parts of her skin that were bare suggested that all of her was that same inhuman shade of stark white.

She turned this way and that, trying to get a sense of her figure in the mere silhouette but all she could garner was that she did not look anything like how she remembered. Caroline no longer required a picture to recall the shape of her old body and the ways in which it had changed as she progressed towards from her youthful beginnings lugging coffee and papers around an office to being a caretaker for her ailing boss to her ultimate destiny of being assimilated by GLaDOS.

This was something new.

If only she could return to the white room, reinstate herself in the android feature replicating machine, fix herself to her former glory instead of this bizarre powder-skinned androgyne, she could escape this place and return to the plan. If she could just do that, whatever had caused this blip could be fixed.

She'd come too far to let a thing like this stop her.

Then the noise echoed around the chamber. This time Caroline could tell what had made the echo. The sound of a speaker crackling to life.

All too late she recognized what she had overlooked in the vanity of establishing what her body looked like.

The orange jumpsuit, zipped to her throat and rolled up in cuffs with the black pieces jutting starkly from her death-pale bare knees.

"Hello there. I've been enjoying your progress. I sincerely hope you didn't believe you would be able to hardwire yourself out on my own frequency or that I didn't notice you inching your way along like some bulbous mechanical worm. I've had experiences with power-hungry cores before and I am well aware of how to deal with them now. I do hope you like testing. I certainly do."

Had she been in possession of one, Caroline's heart would have leapt with joy.

GLaDOS did not know it was her in this body. She believed it to be the fact core who had engineered the escape attempt.

Caroline would test.

For now.

After all, there was always hope and Caroline knew her opponent much, much better than Chell had. In fact, a little better than GLaDOS knew herself.


End file.
